Kuroi junin no onna

Glaring lights carve through the darkness of a dense night. Ten women populate the frame, overflowing it, arriving from all directions to fill the surface of the DaieiScope image. Multiple lovers orbit a drifting married man who hardly seems to possess enough qualities to attract them all and barely knows how he ended up at the twisting centre of such a spiral of passions. They will team up with his wife to take revenge for his inconstancy, but even after many plot twists, the dizziness will persist. Sisterhood and female competition take turns in driving the action. The alienation of modern life in Japan reverberates across the screens of a television station. With a script by Natto Wada, director Kon Ichikawa’s wife and a frequent collaborator of his, KUROI JUNIN NO ONNA upends moral and cinematic convention: women behave like men; an absurd comedy behaves like a film noir. Disguises are stacked on top of each other, while the soundtrack imbues the rocambolesque humour of all the improbable situations with unexpected melancholy. In this interplay of shadows, it is hard to distinguish figures from silhouettes. Shapes rotate at the speed of transgression. (Victor Guimarães)

Kon Ichikawa (selection): THE BURMESE HARP (1956), CONFLAGRATION (1958), FIRES ON THE PLAIN (1959), THE KEY (1959), ODD OBSESSION (1959), HER BROTHER (1960), BONCHI (1960), THE WOMAN’S TESTAMENT (1960), BEING TWO ISN’T EASY (1962), AN ACTOR’S REVENGE (1963), ALONE ACROSS THE PACIFIC (1963), TOKYO OLYMPIAD (1965), THE WANDERERS (1973), THE INUGAMI FAMILY (1976), THE MAKIOKA SISTERS (1983)