Years ago, Ineko Arima and her lover threw themselves into a river. She survived. Later, when she gave birth, the boy's paternal grandfather registered his name as 'Suteo' -- literally, "Throw Away". For nineteen years, they have been the dishonored members of the family, forced to eat apart. It's not that the family is in such great shape. Once they owned 10,000 hectares of rice fields, but that was expropriated. Now they live in a big house, gone ramshackle, training their legitimate grand daughter, Yoshiko Kuga, as if they were still wealthy and it was a hundred years ago, trying to get the scion of a rich, old family to marry her. She's a dutiful girl, and the only one of the family who cares for her despised cousin and his mother. Then she gives a dance recital; her grandmother, Chieko Higashiyama tells her that a young man from a good (i.e. wealthy) family, who is considering marrying her, will be in the audience.
Writer-director Keisuke Kinoshita has written and directed a rich heart-breaker of a movie, full of subtext that I can dimly see, but can't grasp very well. He seems to have had Dickens' GREAT EXPECTATIONS in mind, with Yûsuke Kawazu as a Pip-like Suteo, with no expectations at all once Miss Kuga, a warm-hearted Estella, leaves this home, which suggests Miss Havisham's, with its clinging to a grouchily remembered past. I'm sure it appealed to its Japanese audience, but I lack the context to grasp it. It still held me, with its beautiful images and the two loving women who sustain the bewildered central character.
Writer-director Keisuke Kinoshita has written and directed a rich heart-breaker of a movie, full of subtext that I can dimly see, but can't grasp very well. He seems to have had Dickens' GREAT EXPECTATIONS in mind, with Yûsuke Kawazu as a Pip-like Suteo, with no expectations at all once Miss Kuga, a warm-hearted Estella, leaves this home, which suggests Miss Havisham's, with its clinging to a grouchily remembered past. I'm sure it appealed to its Japanese audience, but I lack the context to grasp it. It still held me, with its beautiful images and the two loving women who sustain the bewildered central character.