In its dissection of Japan's traditional feudal values, Japanese cinema has created some of the most searing accounts of the oppression of women. As the lowest rung in the feudal hierarchy, women were expected to serve, sacrifice, and resign themselves to lives of deprivation and humiliation. In films, when they're not being raped by soldiers or kidnapped by bandits, they're being forced into arranged marriages, neglected by their husbands, exploited by their families, or reduced to supporting themselves as prostitutes or bar hostesses. Filmmakers like Naruse and Mizoguchi showed admirable compassion for women's suffering and turned an admirably sharp eye on the weak and selfish men who cause it, but rarely offered hope that things could change. It is a surprise and a pleasure to discover a movie about a woman who refuses to accept her lot, and who not only fights back but wins.
The astonishing Hideko Takamine plays Oshima, a woman who is rough around the edges, spunky and indomitable. UNTAMED is the episodic tale of her attempts to find a place for herself in a world that has little use for her. But this world is a Japan in transition, and the gradual embrace of Western modernity is an undercurrent throughout the film, mirroring the heroine's gradual climb towards independence. The film opens in 1912 (the first year of the Taisho period, an era of openness and modernization), with Oshima being married to a domineering, uptight shop-keeper (Ken Uehara). Her rebellious nature is already evident: she ran away from a previous arranged marriage on her wedding night, and she bears a scar from the time her mother hit her with a hot iron. Nonetheless she works hard and tries to please her husband, who goes on "business trips" to see his mistress, a smugly conventional beauty. Oshima is likeably forthright and down-to-earth, but still childish and unformed. Confronting the other woman, she is humiliated by her own plainness and lack of polish. Her husband habitually insults her and finally throws her out of their bedroom after an argument, causing her to fall downstairs and have a miscarriage. Quick divorce ensues. Throughout the film, adultery and divorce are ubiquitous and seemingly carry little stigma.
No one wants to give Oshima a home, so she is sent to the mountains in Hokkaido to work as a maid at an onsen (hot spring) to pay off her brother's gambling debts. There she begins an affair with the married owner (the elegant, melancholy Masayuki Mori), who is gentle and appealing but incorrigibly weak and ineffectual. She refuses to let him support her as his mistress, and drifts first to another onsen, then back to Tokyo where she boldly moves from doing hand-sewing at home to working on a sewing-machine in a small factory where she is the only woman. Determined to move up in the world, she sells her trousseau to open her own tailor's shop, teaming up with the homely manager Onada (Daisuke Kato), whom she marries. His laziness dooms their first venture, and they have violent fights, but she sticks with him and eventually their third shop succeeds. He grows a moustache and starts wearing Western suits; she dons dresses and hats, rides a bicycle and passes out advertising handbills; a Victrola appears on the tatami mats.
When Oshima discovers that her second husbanda vain, petulant buffoonis also two-timing, she decides to leave him and set up shop on her own. Not only does she declare her independence in the final scene, it also seems that her reward for enduring a string of disappointing men will be the young, drop-dead-gorgeous Tatsuya Nakadai (whose first appearance prompted wolf-whistles from the audience with whom I saw this film.) He's an employee in the tailor shop, and Oshima simply claims himover the telephone, our first glimpse of yet another symbol of modernitysummoning him to a hot spring to discuss the new business venture. Talk about taking charge! In his brief cameo Nakadai doesn't have much to do except stand around looking handsome, but he was at the start of a long and very distinguished career in which he successfully avoided typecasting as a pretty boy. Already visible here is his irresistible enthusiasm, an inner fire that leaps through his almost too perfect face and shines from his soulful eyes.
All of the acting in UNTAMED is flawless, but Hideko Takamine effortlessly dominates. Contradicting the demure and graceful stereotype of the Japanese woman, she has a slouching posture, a slightly coarse voice and a kind of dynamic clumsiness. When drunk she crashes through a painted screen, and she engages in several punching, kicking, biting, rolling-on-the-floor brawls, first with her husband and then with his mistress. We constantly see her at work: rolling up her skirt to walk through rain or snow, standing barefoot in a stream washing clothes, running along a hallway polishing the floor, sewing and doing sums with an abacus. She is a very ordinary, and at the same time extraordinary woman; her resilience, bravery and unquenchable spirit reveal themselves gradually and always credibly. The episodic structure of UNTAMED can be hard to follow, and at first the film feels slightly glum and aimless. But as it builds steam (like the trains that appear with increasingly frequency) it becomes deeply involving, capturing the rhythm and texture of daily life. As Oshima stumbles and rebounds, she engages the sympathy so strongly that the film becomes suspenseful as we wait to see what will happen next. The last third has a comic, outrageous mood, but the final shot of Oshima walking in the rain has the grace and inchoate melancholy of a woodblock print. Calm and mature, the woman who has never fit in finally looks at home.
The astonishing Hideko Takamine plays Oshima, a woman who is rough around the edges, spunky and indomitable. UNTAMED is the episodic tale of her attempts to find a place for herself in a world that has little use for her. But this world is a Japan in transition, and the gradual embrace of Western modernity is an undercurrent throughout the film, mirroring the heroine's gradual climb towards independence. The film opens in 1912 (the first year of the Taisho period, an era of openness and modernization), with Oshima being married to a domineering, uptight shop-keeper (Ken Uehara). Her rebellious nature is already evident: she ran away from a previous arranged marriage on her wedding night, and she bears a scar from the time her mother hit her with a hot iron. Nonetheless she works hard and tries to please her husband, who goes on "business trips" to see his mistress, a smugly conventional beauty. Oshima is likeably forthright and down-to-earth, but still childish and unformed. Confronting the other woman, she is humiliated by her own plainness and lack of polish. Her husband habitually insults her and finally throws her out of their bedroom after an argument, causing her to fall downstairs and have a miscarriage. Quick divorce ensues. Throughout the film, adultery and divorce are ubiquitous and seemingly carry little stigma.
No one wants to give Oshima a home, so she is sent to the mountains in Hokkaido to work as a maid at an onsen (hot spring) to pay off her brother's gambling debts. There she begins an affair with the married owner (the elegant, melancholy Masayuki Mori), who is gentle and appealing but incorrigibly weak and ineffectual. She refuses to let him support her as his mistress, and drifts first to another onsen, then back to Tokyo where she boldly moves from doing hand-sewing at home to working on a sewing-machine in a small factory where she is the only woman. Determined to move up in the world, she sells her trousseau to open her own tailor's shop, teaming up with the homely manager Onada (Daisuke Kato), whom she marries. His laziness dooms their first venture, and they have violent fights, but she sticks with him and eventually their third shop succeeds. He grows a moustache and starts wearing Western suits; she dons dresses and hats, rides a bicycle and passes out advertising handbills; a Victrola appears on the tatami mats.
When Oshima discovers that her second husbanda vain, petulant buffoonis also two-timing, she decides to leave him and set up shop on her own. Not only does she declare her independence in the final scene, it also seems that her reward for enduring a string of disappointing men will be the young, drop-dead-gorgeous Tatsuya Nakadai (whose first appearance prompted wolf-whistles from the audience with whom I saw this film.) He's an employee in the tailor shop, and Oshima simply claims himover the telephone, our first glimpse of yet another symbol of modernitysummoning him to a hot spring to discuss the new business venture. Talk about taking charge! In his brief cameo Nakadai doesn't have much to do except stand around looking handsome, but he was at the start of a long and very distinguished career in which he successfully avoided typecasting as a pretty boy. Already visible here is his irresistible enthusiasm, an inner fire that leaps through his almost too perfect face and shines from his soulful eyes.
All of the acting in UNTAMED is flawless, but Hideko Takamine effortlessly dominates. Contradicting the demure and graceful stereotype of the Japanese woman, she has a slouching posture, a slightly coarse voice and a kind of dynamic clumsiness. When drunk she crashes through a painted screen, and she engages in several punching, kicking, biting, rolling-on-the-floor brawls, first with her husband and then with his mistress. We constantly see her at work: rolling up her skirt to walk through rain or snow, standing barefoot in a stream washing clothes, running along a hallway polishing the floor, sewing and doing sums with an abacus. She is a very ordinary, and at the same time extraordinary woman; her resilience, bravery and unquenchable spirit reveal themselves gradually and always credibly. The episodic structure of UNTAMED can be hard to follow, and at first the film feels slightly glum and aimless. But as it builds steam (like the trains that appear with increasingly frequency) it becomes deeply involving, capturing the rhythm and texture of daily life. As Oshima stumbles and rebounds, she engages the sympathy so strongly that the film becomes suspenseful as we wait to see what will happen next. The last third has a comic, outrageous mood, but the final shot of Oshima walking in the rain has the grace and inchoate melancholy of a woodblock print. Calm and mature, the woman who has never fit in finally looks at home.