User reviews

I saw YEARNING (MIDARERU, 1964) at a screening at New York's Asia Society on Dec. 3, 2010. It's only the second film by Mikio Naruse that I've seen, but I'm eager to see more. (The first was WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, 1960, seen on Criterion DVD earlier this year.) YEARNING is a quiet but emotionally honest drama about Reiko, a war widow who has given her best years to her late husband's family, managing their grocery shop while Koji, her younger, handsome brother-in-law, gambles, drinks and loafs. The family plots to tear down the shop and build a supermarket in its place, pushing Reiko out of the top position. Koji protests. When he decides to take a stand, on more than one front, it changes his relationship to Reiko and forces her to make a life-changing decision.

Naruse shoots in a spare, classical style with sync-sound recording, both on location and in the studio, and gets strong performances out of the entire cast. Yuzo Kayama, whom I know primarily from period movies like SANJURO, CHUSHINGURA and SWORD OF DOOM, plays Koji as a spoiled son and brother who begins to mature before our eyes. Hideko Takamine plays the still-beautiful 30-something widow whose self-effacing front hides her own submerged desires. She never acts on her own behalf, but just dutifully runs the shop and waits for Koji to grow up. No matter what is happening in her heart, she simply won't ask for anything or accept it when it's offered. Even when she makes her big move midway through the film, it's only because she thinks it will help Koji. Reiko resembles an Ozu heroine, while Keiko, the lead character in WHEN A WOMAN, also played by Takamine, was more like a Mizoguchi heroine. The film was shot in widescreen black-and-white and the action is set mostly in a small rural town far from Tokyo where a new supermarket loudly promotes itself and its cheaper prices, causing hardship for the small shopkeepers like Reiko. (This is why Koji's family wants to expand the store-to compete.) Later, the film stays with Reiko on a train ride for a long stretch, wrapping up in a small, picturesque resort town.

Mie Hama, the petite beauty who played Kissy Suzuki, the Japanese agent who marries James Bond in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967), appears in two memorable scenes as Koji's cute and fickle young bedmate who chews gum (and spits it out on the floor of the shop) and boasts a beauty shop hairdo like American teenage girls were wearing at the time. She's quite keyed into her own desires in a way that Reiko can only envy. When she was on screen, I kind of wished the movie would stay with her for a while.

The abrupt ending may leave some viewers unsatisfied. I would have preferred some kind of epilogue, like the final scene of WHEN A WOMAN. However, I've learned to accept that with certain filmmakers like Naruse, one should take the ending on faith, even if you don't get the reason for it right away. YEARNING remains a beautiful, moving Japanese drama with an insistent subtext about the lingering effects of the war on Japanese families some 20 years after the surrender.

Mikio Naruse's film Yearning reflects the significant social change occurring in Japan in 1964 when supermarkets began to offer cheaper prices in order to drive out the small shops which had dominated the market. This changing structure particularly affects Reiko (Hideko Takamine), a widow since the last war after only being married for six months. She has remained with her husband's family to run the family grocery store along with her mother-in-law Shizu (Aiko Mamasu) while brother-in-law Koji (Yûzô Kayama), and sister-in-laws Hisako (Mitsuko Kusabue) and Takako (Yumi Shirakawa) live their own private lives. Takamine's remarkable performance as the repressed widow conveys a longing for a freedom that has been elusive.

The film opens as a van parades the streets advertising the supermarket, driving past Reiko's store in the process. Shot in Naruse's quiet style, the film is a study in contrasts. Reiko is a woman with traditional values who has repressed her own desire for companionship to serve her husband's family, while Koji is a layabout who drinks and gambles and takes no responsibility for the family business. When a group of drunken businessman pressure bar girls to see how many eggs they can stuff into their mouths, Koji intervenes and starts a fight leaving Reiko to bail him out of jail. Koji and his sisters make plans to build their own supermarket, but conspicuously leave Reiko out of their plans, urging her to remarry.

Reiko is hurt by the family's seeming lack of appreciation for her service. She is accepting of her role, but emotionally unprepared when Koji surprisingly confesses to her that he loves her. Though Reiko initially rejects his advances, she tells him later: "when you said you loved me, I felt glad," and "I've been a different woman since that day." She is unable, however, to accept Koji's telling her that she has wasted her life for his family. Though she hears the words, she is too bound to the past to be able to acknowledge their truth. She tells Koji, "I didn't waste my life. I lived it," but she is not convincing. The entire mood of the film changes with Koji's declaration and the way their relationship unfolds constitutes the emotional core of the film and provides its most dramatic moments and its shattering conclusion.

I've seen most of Naruse's surviving filmography, and out of all those films I would recommend "Midareru" (Yearning, 1964) as an introduction piece for those interested in the director's work. This is because the film features most of the filmmaker's core motifs in a polished, easy-to-follow form, that hooks you in very fast and improves towards the ending.

Naruse's everyday dramas and tales of women living through hard times resemble each other very much, but vary in quality considerably. "Midareru" is one of the director's collaborations with his most-important post-war actress Takamine Hideko. The film craftily builds upon the characters and storylines played by Takamine in previous Naruse films like "Tsuma no kokoro" (A Wife's Heart, 1956), "Onna no za" (The Wiser Age, 1962) and "Onna no rekishi" (A Woman's Place, 1963). In "Midareru", Takamine is again seen as a widow living with his dead husband's family, trying to keep a small family-owned shop going. She is an invaluable member of the household, though people have started to wonder, if she should remarry while she is still young. Takamine has a difficult relationship with his husband's brother Koji (Kayama Yuzo), who lounges through life aimlessly. After a while thing change, and possible romantic sparks occur between them.

Like most Naruse films, "Midareru" operates between the emotional world, and the economical one. The shop is struggling, because a supermarket opened nearby, and the entrepreneurs can't meet their prices. Koji's free-wheeling lifestyle does not help, and Takamine's daily routines take place either in melancholy solitude or interacting with a family, that she is not really a member of. The mundane core of Naruse's work is established well, and yet the ambiguity that makes his works harder to classify than those by his contemporaries is absent in this film. "Midareru" does not rely on the viewer interpreting half of the plot, but is instead straight-forward and well spread as a narrative. This is why I call it a great introduction to the director, whose talent is unquestioned, but whose filmography is full of ups and downs, springs and autumns.

The black and white cinematography is exquisite and captures a detailed vision of everyday life. The narrative carries some worries about the society's state and the rapid westernization, but this is not one of the director's more didactic works. It is very minimalist in the number of important characters, and keeps the bulk of the film close to these individuals. Takamine gives a stunning performance, though it's reserved and classy like her work always is. Kayama manages to turn Koji slowly from a caricature of modernity into a three dimensional individual with a past, a present, and possibly a future. The final act of the film is one of Naruse's best, and the film as whole is that as well.

In the War, Hideko Takamine married a soldier. He was killed within six months. His family's liquor store was caught in a bombing raid, and while most of the community fled, she singlehandedly worked to rebuild the business. Now eighteen years have passed and the store and the family are prosperous. However, there are two new supermarkets in town, drawing all the business. Yûzô Kayama, her husband's younger brother, has been strangely lazy. He had a job with a good corporation, but quit. Instead of working at the store, he spends his days loafing. Yet he is smart enough to realize that, with the store's good location, there is an answer: convert to a supermarket. The family is enthusiastic. His sisters' husbands are willing to back the expanded venture in return for directorships, and the sisters are ecstatic. Yûzô says that Hideko will have to be an executive; she has, after all, saved the family and run the store for almost two decades. The sisters think this is ridiculous; she is not, they insist, a blood relative. Nothing gets done. Hideko is only vaguely aware of the proposal, because her brother-in-law won't talk about it. then he tells her the secret he has been silent about for so long:he is in love with her.

Here's Mikio Naruse again, plowing the same patch he did for so many years, the Shomin-Gekim. He was often compared to Ozu, to his own detriment. Although he produced masterpieces, there is nowhere near as much consideration of his work. He did not concern himself with the workings of the family, but with the individual, usually the oppressed woman (although Kamaya suffers for his love, Miss Takamine is not even permitted to consider the matter): very bad! His focus is not the collective. He does not plant his camera humbly on the mat and look at his subject through long, unmoving takes: very bad! How is a film critic supposed to recognize his style? He does not use the same actors, over and again, in much the same roles: very bad! A true auteur tells the same story, over and over! His characters suffer the strictures of society, with only private tears: very bad! The bourgeouisie win again!

It's a false dichotomy, as if by admiring Ozu more, we must despise his colleagues. I admire Ozu greatly, and I also admire Naruse, who told his tales of woe with great compassion and despair, and did so with fine actors. As he does here.

I was really astonished to see so few reviews on such a great movie.

Yearning (A woman in upheaval in its French title, Midareru in Japanese - being disturbed) is a movie that deserves your attention. And not only if you like Japan. Of course, it is really characteristic of Japanese culture at that time and the change that proceeds in this country at that time, beginning to shift from tradition to modernity. But it is also the wonderful tale a the relationship between two people and how the social constraint applies to them. And how this relationship begin to shift (yes, like the country itself, however not in the same way).

Emotion, society, money, this movies addresses a lot of topics but do not forget to follow its story. Helped with a great acting, with a beautiful female lead characer, it is a successful movie in every aspects. Do take your time to enjoy it!

I have all the respect in the world for Mikio Naruse, I really do. His films always touch on things that are still relevant- he's good at exploring timeless themes. His films always have good acting, and are also always nice to look at. They're also tremendously empathetic, and focus far more on female characters than many films from the 1950s and 60s. In that way, they also feel forward-thinking and maybe even radical.

But at the same time, I do always find them slow-going and a little hard to really get into it. There's a certain distance I feel every time I watch one of his movies, even while I recognise they're very well-made. And there's no proper criticisms I can make about it; not more than saying I just find his films a little boring.

It's a me problem. I still respect what he did as a filmmaker, and I do understand why he's so highly regarded. His movies just aren't really for me - not any I've seen yet, at least.

The first part of this film makes it look like its main focus is going to be on one of the perils of capitalism, that of large companies driving smaller ones out of business by moving into a neighborhood and undercutting them on prices, kind of like a much more serious version of Supermarket Woman (1996). I thought my review might start with, people, if you value your mom and pop shops, for the of god, stop shopping at Walmart and Amazon. That is certainly a component here, but this film broadens into so much more, dealing with societal expectations for Japanese women and slowly developing an incredibly touching romance.

Hideko Takemine plays Reiko, the widowed daughter-in-law who has been running a grocery store for her in-law family for 18 years, since the end of WWII. She built the store on her own while the rest of the family fled to the countryside to avoid Allied bombing, and lost her beloved husband to the war. A large supermarket moves in and begins taking her shop's business, but worse yet, her sisters-in-law, their husbands, and her mother-in-law have hatched a plan to tear down the grocery and build a supermarket of their own. Despite everything she's done for them, they want her out of the picture, either through re-marriage or relegation to a minor job in the new store.

Resisting this plan is the younger brother (Yuzo Kayama), who was just 7 years old when his brother met Reiko, so perhaps 10-15 years younger than her. (I was surprised this was the actual age difference between Kayama and Takemine, since Takemine at 40 looks so young and is absolutely gorgeous, but I digress.) The younger brother is a bit of a profligate, gambling, sleeping around with women, and staying out to all hours and getting drunk. He stands up for Reiko, and we soon find out that in addition to his sense of fairness, it's because he harbors feelings for her.

Reiko seems like the epitome of ideal womanhood, something which is as limiting as it is unfair. She holds a torch for her late husband with no desire to remarry, and selflessly works away with a smile. She would rather sacrifice her own feelings than complain or cause antagonism. Her emotions are generally well concealed, but Takemine is masterful in revealing them as the story places out. Watch the look of shock and horror on her face when the younger man declares himself, the tears coming to her eyes on the train, or her conflicted look when denying him even after admitting she loves him. She's brilliant.

It seems like it would be the easiest thing in the world for her to be happy in a new marriage, but she's weighted down with feeling a need to stay loyal to her dead husband, what others will think about the age difference, and how she'll be ruining this young guy's promising life. She's a genuinely virtuous person, but I got the sense that she had also internalized too much of the societal expectation to be perfectly selfless. A long, overnight train ride through the country and growing attachment between the pair leads to swirling emotions and unforgettable scenes, played so well by both Takemine and Kayama. Great stuff from Mikio Naruse.

I have binge watching Naruse films and have liked all but one. Yearning may be the moving both as a love story and as a story of social change. The theme of small businesses being run out by large corporations is as timely today in the US as it was in 1964 Japan. The two leads are terrific and have great chemistry. Highly recommended

Mikio Naruse is of the same generation as Kurosawa, Ozu and Mitzoguchi, but he is less well known. His films have much in common with those of Yasujiro Ozu. His main themes are family relations and the tension between tradition and modernisation in Japan after World War II. His female characters are on average stronger than the women in Ozu films.

"Yearning" is one of his latest and highly rated films. It is typical of his whole oeuvre. Tradition versus modernisation is represented by the mom and dad stores threatened by the rise of supermarkets. The strong woman is the young widow who has build up the mom and dad store of her parents in law after her husband died in World War II. Family complications arise when the family (mostly the daughters) plans to sell the premise of the store to a supermarket and wants to get rid of their sister in law. That they rap up this message in the form of concern (isn't it time for their sister in law to remarry?) makes is no less selfish.

With the widowed sister in law as the only likeable character in the film one almost has has to think of "Tokyo story" (1953, Yasujiro Ozu).

I saw this film in French, with the title "Une Femme Dans La Tourmente". A year later I still think about it. Postwar Japan is gearing up for the period of "rapid growth", and many of the small family-owned businesses and the families that run them are being swept away. Reiko has supported her late husband's family with her indefatigable work throughout the war and still cooks, cleans and takes up the slack. The family was quite happy to take advantage of her hard work during the hard days, but now that their remaining son is old enough to marry they find her an embarrassment. The son is a lazy young man, used to going with the flow and frankly not trying very hard at anything. When a modern supermarket chain comes to their area, many small shops are going to the wall. Should they continue to struggle on as they are, or sell out for what they can get? Reiko faces her own decision: stay or go? And if she goes, where?