2020 ‘スパイの妻’ Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
It’s 1940, and the population of Japan is divided over its entry into World War II. Satoko, the wife of a fabric merchant, is devoted to her husband but is beginning to suspect he’s up to something. Soon she allows herself to be drawn into a game in which she enigmatically conceals her intentions.
Spy no tsuma, Spionens kone, Supai no tsuma, 間諜之妻, 스파이의 아내, スパイの妻 ＜劇場版＞, スパイの妻〈劇場版〉, Supai no tsuma: Gekijōban, Spy no tsuma: Gekijōban, スパイの妻 劇場版, Les Amants sacrifiés
Really interesting how the digital filmmaking here sits in contrast to its use of classical techniques (i.e. blocking, backlights, very set bound). It's a tension wherein the digital textures re-inforce and -double the whole theme of the constructed nature of images and identity. Everybody's caught up in and pushing against another's story (e.g. the nation's, the military's, a spy's, a wife's). Of course, the real centre of this is Satoko and Yusaka's mutual efforts to insert or remove her from the film's titular identity, while the film and the films that this film is about and the films inside this film have always-already told us Satoko can't play if she doesn't know the real stakes of the game and the extent of the deception it entails. Profound stuff. Obvious Vertigo vibes that eventually give way to A Page of Madness.
After leveraging his success in J-horror into a string of grounded social dramas that culminated with the 2008 masterpiece “Tokyo Sonata,” Japanese auteur Kurosawa Kiyoshi seemed to hit the ceiling of his talent or grow bored of himself. Possibly both. The years that followed told the story of a restless artist who was desperate for something — anything — that might live up to the prescient chill of “Pulse,” or the disquieting uncertainty of “Bright Future.”
Kurosawa’s search led him down an increasingly esoteric path that saw him zig-zag from a pair of lifeless ghost dramas (“Journey to the Shore” and the French-language “Daguerreotype”), to an interminable alien invasion throwback (“Before We Vanish”), a toothless “return-to-form” (the psychological thriller “Creepy”),…
A marriage is a country in time of war. Fits nicely with Kurosawa preocupations of the past half dozen years. All the duplicity material is great, genre needs feeding on the central drama in often rewarding ways. All those nods to classic Japanese cinema contrast with the flat digital cinematography rhat add an extra layer of removed artifice to every gesture,
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Wife of a Spy is a smart and worrying thriller, executed with a disturbing calm. Within a wartime Imperial Japan, Wife of a Spy reveals a culture of fear, where everyone is keeping secrets. The militarised society is reflected through the clean and orderly filmmaking, which has a simplistic production design and generally flat visual aesthetic. Like Kurosawa's horror movies, it is scary because it doesn't show off. It is normal, unthreatening, with something unsettling and deceptive lingering underneath. Paranoia and suspicion consume the movie, with the state and the characters never able to sleep. Our lead must place trust in a husband who hides things from her. They represent dissent, seeking freedom and justice in a time…
This time is yours. I have known. The unknown secret is uncovered. But the dimensions can only be seen from one side. Applied with a retro digitalization. It could look like cheap plastic, especially from it's television movie origins, but Kiyoshi Kurosawa proceeds with the execution, shimmering regardless of it's limits. Through the psychological emotion of a trick film. A cinematic safe code. Like a different form of thriller, except the tensions and frowning faces were above the image that is the threat of atrocity. The eyes were never the same.
"He's a businessman, not an enemy."
Like all of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's best films, the transformations that this narrative undergoes operate as if the central character's perceptions of the conflicts around them have been extended into the form of the film itself. What struck me most immediately about this work was its interest in the conflict between cosmopolitan business interests—always seeking to supersede state boundaries and borders—and the interests of the nation-state, tied inextricably to a sense of irrationalism, which are signified through the two most important men in Satoko's life: respectively, her husband and Taiji, a local military leader and childhood friend. This film's architecture is thus constructed on the ground of that essentially modern conflict between capitalism's expansion and…
Things lost in the ambiguities of war. A patient melodrama of pristine art design and wonderful neonoir cinematography, where even the element of overexposure turns into a semiotic tool. The muted, forbearing sentimental overlays of the dramatic dimension are given much pungency by the horror sequences, masterfully assembled and intensified by the tight game of expectations, stringed together through an intelligent iconography that only turns the film more tense.
I think I was expecting too much from Kurosawa on this one. When I heard of a World War 2 film from a visionary auteur, I was expecting something as bold as Black Book. Instead of Verhoeven though, this is much more Joe Wright. This apparently was a passion project for Kurosawa, but it comes off as more saccharine and serviceable than passionate. The flashes of the horror that the director has shown in the past only makes the experience more frustrating that it's only crumbs, but it's a fine enough movie
"I'll confide in you that I'm not crazy at all. However, that's the very fact that makes me the crazy one in this country."
Where are Yu Aoi's awards for this performance??????
This film is a marvellous piece of work that confronts Japan's darkest parts of history and war crimes and the patriotic individuals who could not bear to stand behind them.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films, in their purest form, are about having no control. not being able to fix your immediate circumstances or determine the fate of your closest loved ones is heartbreaking, it gradually rots you day by day. this is something that Kurosawa understands intimately, particularly in his recent works. To the Ends of the Earth is about having no power over environment, with the protagonist being forced to stay in claustrophobic hotel rooms and foreign cities while her world potentially crumbles at home. his horror films are infamous for this, with Cure reiterating to the audience that there is nothing any character can do to stop the violence, and Pulse showcasing the destruction of the entire world. there are…
