Rating: 3.5/5
Criterion Challenge 2023 | 23/52 | Gasper Noé’s Closet Picks
Talking about my life makes me cry
The movie opens with a beetle struggling through the mud, collecting dung.
Winter 1918
In a small Japanese farming village, En gives birth to a daughter, Tomé. Chuji was proud to be the father, but the town gossip suggests that Tomé could be anyone’s child.
As Tomé grows, En is distant and judgmental. Tomé learns about En’s relationships with other men when she is six. So, she clings to Chuji. Because En and Chuji are unmarried, Tomé believes she is married to Chuji.
By the time Tomé is 24, she works in a silk mill. En lures Tomé back to the farm under the pretense that Chuji is dying. He isn’t.
They need help to pay off a debt to the landowners and want Tomé to marry the landowner’s son, Shunzo. Tomé refuses, and Shunzo rapes her, impregnating her.
Chuji beats up Shunzo, forcing Tomé back to the family, unable to return to Shunzo for money or support.
So, Tomé must leave her daughter, Nobuko, with Chuji and En to care for her while Tomé returns to work.
We continue to follow Tomé through various stages of her life, from impoverished work as a housemaid to running a brother as a maiden.
Though she tries to do good, life punishes her for it. It’s only when she becomes conniving and self-serving that she can have any success in life.
Meanwhile, as Nobuko grows up, she aspires to own a farm and break the cycle of generational trauma that has broken the women in her family.
The filmmaking is sharp, almost at the cost of audience connection. The time jumps between when we meet Tomé brings us to a woman whose circumstances have changed her.
Whenever Tomé experiences an event that changes the trajectory of her life, the movie freezes, and the music turns disjointed and sharp, almost like a horror movie.
I liked the movie, but I wish it connected with me more. I want to rewatch it now that I understand it better.