The Insect Woman

The Insect Woman

(Shohei Imamura, 1962)

Rating: 4/5

Reviewed by Dave Lancaster

Summary: A compelling and curious chronicle of a Japanese woman's struggle for survival, the Masters of Cinema have unearthed another Shohei Imamura classic via a lavish presentation.
 

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"Talking about my life makes me cry" is one of the lines delivered by the brilliant Sachiko Hidari as Tome Matsuki, the tragic figure tracked in Shohei Imamura's 'The Insect Woman'.

She is the woman of the title and the bulk of her misfortunes and fleeting urges are chronicled from her birth in 1910s Japan through five decades of vast social change and war to which she is frequently impoverished and put down by her dominating male counterparts whether it's her co-workers, incestual father or later clients.

Imamura is a wonderful auteur in Japanese cinema, forever enthralled by boundaries between man and animal as seen in works as diverse as crime thriller 'Pigs & Battleships', island-in-change drama 'Profound Desire of the Gods' and the dangers of tradition classic 'The Ballad of Narayama'. This insect is just trying to survive right up to the final mesmerising frame that asserts fragility and strength all at once.

crowding his frame with jarring objects at different levels of focus, he frequently bewilders his protagonists, boxes them in to make their world uncomfortably small while projecting his narrative across huge backdrops of changing institutions.

'The Insect Woman' reminded me of Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon' - a similar film that followed someone ordinary and otherwise uninteresting through hell and back. Of course Imamura's style is his own - his widescreen framing is extraordinary (the Masters of Cinema print is lavish) as are his sparse musical breaks and sudden 'Goodfellas' style freeze frames to divide the timeline structure. Compelling and curious cinema.

 

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