What starts as a film with sympathies towards the plight of women in post-war Japan spirals into a rather strange concoction of screwball comedy and political commentary, and the result was a little tough to fully appreciate. Early on (and probably at its best), we see an impoverished woman who has been left by her lover trying to abandon her baby, and along with her friend considering taking jobs in stage productions that involve stripping, nude modelling, or outright prostitution. In my favorite scene, we see her friend's supreme discomfort of needing to take off her clothes when the artist's two friends show up ostensibly to appreciate the process, when everyone know they're there to ogle her.
The film spirals a bit with the character of an old and rather ugly woman (complete with facial hair shown in close-up, good grief) representing conservative politics. She is campaigning on behalf of rearming Japan to compete in a world with atomic weapons, and lowering taxes; all that's missing from her spiel is a "Make Japan Great Again" slogan. She happens to be the mother of the woman who is planning on marrying the artist, and it seems all roads lead to the artist, with the model also having fallen in love with him and her friend's baby (apparently) having been fathered by him. This leads to scenes of mistaken identity and various misadventures, none of which were very clever to me.
Buoying the film is Hideko Takamine in the role of Carmen, radiating beauty and vulnerability, and adorable in scenes such as the one where she takes ballet lessons with a bunch of kids. Counter to that was Keisuke's Kinoshita's direction, much as it pains me to say it. I liked the idea of the tilted camera angles as a symbol for the topsy-turvy world of Japan at this point in its history, but not when they overdone to an extreme, as that made the technique lose its power and made me feel like I was on a boat in the ocean when it rocked back and forth. At the end though, it's the weakness of the script that dooms this one to being a subpar film. I'm glad I saw it, but there are certainly many better films from the period.
The film spirals a bit with the character of an old and rather ugly woman (complete with facial hair shown in close-up, good grief) representing conservative politics. She is campaigning on behalf of rearming Japan to compete in a world with atomic weapons, and lowering taxes; all that's missing from her spiel is a "Make Japan Great Again" slogan. She happens to be the mother of the woman who is planning on marrying the artist, and it seems all roads lead to the artist, with the model also having fallen in love with him and her friend's baby (apparently) having been fathered by him. This leads to scenes of mistaken identity and various misadventures, none of which were very clever to me.
Buoying the film is Hideko Takamine in the role of Carmen, radiating beauty and vulnerability, and adorable in scenes such as the one where she takes ballet lessons with a bunch of kids. Counter to that was Keisuke's Kinoshita's direction, much as it pains me to say it. I liked the idea of the tilted camera angles as a symbol for the topsy-turvy world of Japan at this point in its history, but not when they overdone to an extreme, as that made the technique lose its power and made me feel like I was on a boat in the ocean when it rocked back and forth. At the end though, it's the weakness of the script that dooms this one to being a subpar film. I'm glad I saw it, but there are certainly many better films from the period.
