Wife

A novel by Fumiko Hiyashi provided that basis for this unusual work by Mikio Naruse -- Wife (aka Tsuma) (1953) tells the story of a decade-old marriage in the process of disintegrating. Opening and closing with the same sequence of the husband silently leaving home, the real focus of the story -- as with more Naruse films -- is the wife, who decides to take desperate measures to try and hold her marriage together, including foresaking her accepted obligations. The result is a drama with some near-comical, battle-of-the-sexes type overtones that are unusual for Naruse, though the tone is still rooted in domestic tragedy and the message seems to be a wider-ranging one concerning the stresses of life in postwar Japan.