The Wiser Age

1962 ‘女の座’ Directed by Mikio Naruse

Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner.

Hideko Takamine Yôko Tsukasa Yuriko Hoshi Reiko Dan Keiko Awaji Mitsuko Kusabue Haruko Sugimura Akemi Kita Yatsuko Tan'ami Aiko Mimasu Akira Takarada Tatsuya Mihashi Keiju Kobayashi Yōsuke Natsuki Daisuke Katō Chishū Ryū Kenzaburo Osawa Ryōsuke Kagawa Kunio Ôtsuka Senkichi Ômura Akira Tani Kumeko Otowa Atsuko Ichinomiya Yû Sekita Yasuhiko Saijô Toshio Miura Masayoshi Kawabe Teruko Mita Toki Shiozawa

Alternative Titles

A Woman's Place, La place de la femme, Onna no za, Woman's Status

drama

111 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by dirtylaundri ★★★★½

Naruse's first reflex when dealing with the widescreen format seems to be: to cram in ever more siblings. "Daughters, Wives and a Mother", a sprawling family tale from 1960, had five, "A Woman's Place", a sprawling family tale from 1962, has seven (at least). But despite that, the latter film doesn't feel like an intensification, but like an relaxation. "Daughters...", almost completely set indoors, and composed in often extremley flat tableus, is an extremely dense film. The constraints of cinemascope function as a pressure cooker. The excess of lateral space doesn't result in breathing room, but transforms itself in an airless enclosure embracing all characters. Naruse's cinema heating up to boiling point... The result isn't an explosion, though, but a…
Review by Jay H ★★★★

Day 2 of Yuriko Hoshi tribute week on DKU-TV (formerly TKU-TV) and the second film in the Mikio Naruse double feature led once again by an excellent performance from Hideko Takamine. Story centers around a family living in Tokyo with five daughters looking for marriage. Yuriko Hoshi, one of the daughters, is quite sublime and feisty in her small role. Things get initially disrupted when a couple visits from Kyushu but the other shoe drops when a mysterious son re-appears (Akira Takarada playing wonderfully against type here). Melodrama abounds as the family is shaken and attempts to stabilize until more misfortune occurs. Terrific film and filmmaking with a stellar cast.
Review by Thomas__ ★★★½

'Onna no za' resulta en un buen retrato sobre la familia así como de las distintas generaciones que la conforman. Un elenco estelar (punto muy a destacar), humor y drama equilibrados y un desarrollo de la historia fluido.
Decir que su primera hora me parece fantástica pero en la segunda siento que se pierde un poco (repuntando al final) y deja algunas tramas de lado. Igual comprensible viendo la cantidad de personajes que maneja y desarrollarlos todos al mismo nivel es un trabajo algo complicado (más aún en menos de dos horas de metraje). Aún así el conjunto final funciona muy bien.

Recent reviews

Review by Thomas__ ★★★½

'Onna no za' resulta en un buen retrato sobre la familia así como de las distintas generaciones que la conforman. Un elenco estelar (punto muy a destacar), humor y drama equilibrados y un desarrollo de la historia fluido.
Decir que su primera hora me parece fantástica pero en la segunda siento que se pierde un poco (repuntando al final) y deja algunas tramas de lado. Igual comprensible viendo la cantidad de personajes que maneja y desarrollarlos todos al mismo nivel es un trabajo algo complicado (más aún en menos de dos horas de metraje). Aún así el conjunto final funciona muy bien.
Review by Javier ★★½

Mucho personaje.
Es una obra exageradamente coral, pero que se puede apreciar cómo la búsqueda de lazos artificiales descuida los lazos naturales.
Review by mauvaisang_ ★★★

纷纷杂杂吵吵闹闹过后的安静度日，看到结尾心里软塌塌的。不过还是《东京物语》更得我心啊。
Review by momoe_nakanishi ★★★★

Like a sieve sifting life, people and complications, leaving the amicable elements together at the end, with losses along the way. A very funny movie.
Review by momoe_nakanishi ★★★★

Maybe his funniest movie. And his most sprawling, blown apart by war, errant love and economics then stitched back together family. Whatever it takes to put a cast like this together. And while i’m playing "mosts", and take this as one male appraising another, but he is the greatest male director of women. More than Bergman, Almodovar, Fassbinder (just), Mizoguchi or any other filmmaker i can list off. Together and alone, nowhere in classical cinema does the hand disappear and they exist as real, full human beings, and the films existing solely for that being and psychology, as much as in his. The woman’s place of the title existing in that being and psychology - a quiet yet infinitely resonant shared space. Maybe it's something more to do with the authors he adapted.
Review by Patrick McCoy ★★★★

Mikio Naruse's 1962 film A Woman's Place / The Wiser Age feels like homage to Yasujiro's Ozu's Tokyo Story. Surprisingly, this film has been dismissed by the likes of Audie Bock who said that it and two other films from this era are "mediocre" and "negligible" that they have been omitted from film reference books. I beg to differ, it is still a fascinating family drama representative of the changing society seen in the early 60s in postwar Japan. It is the story of a large multi-generational family that comes together when the family patriarch, Kinjiro Ishikawa (Chishu Ryu playing a similar role to the iconic one from Tokyo Story), falls ill. The saintly widowed daughter-in-law, Yoshiko (Noriko played by…
Review by TARDELLINO ★★★★

成濑是多么伟大的导演啊。。。
Review by Eric Eidelstein ★★★½

Poor Hideko Takamine. :(
Review by Jay H ★★★★

Day 2 of Yuriko Hoshi tribute week on DKU-TV (formerly TKU-TV) and the second film in the Mikio Naruse double feature led once again by an excellent performance from Hideko Takamine. Story centers around a family living in Tokyo with five daughters looking for marriage. Yuriko Hoshi, one of the daughters, is quite sublime and feisty in her small role. Things get initially disrupted when a couple visits from Kyushu but the other shoe drops when a mysterious son re-appears (Akira Takarada playing wonderfully against type here). Melodrama abounds as the family is shaken and attempts to stabilize until more misfortune occurs. Terrific film and filmmaking with a stellar cast.
Review by dirtylaundri ★★★★½

Naruse's first reflex when dealing with the widescreen format seems to be: to cram in ever more siblings. "Daughters, Wives and a Mother", a sprawling family tale from 1960, had five, "A Woman's Place", a sprawling family tale from 1962, has seven (at least). But despite that, the latter film doesn't feel like an intensification, but like an relaxation. "Daughters...", almost completely set indoors, and composed in often extremley flat tableus, is an extremely dense film. The constraints of cinemascope function as a pressure cooker. The excess of lateral space doesn't result in breathing room, but transforms itself in an airless enclosure embracing all characters. Naruse's cinema heating up to boiling point... The result isn't an explosion, though, but a…