Girls of the Night

Kinuyo Tanaka was one of Japanese cinema's best-known actors and directed six films. This one, from 1961, is among them. It follows a young woman leaving one of the rehabilitation centres opened after the prostitution prevention law came into force in 1956. Tanaka's interest is not in the law but in what comes after it. The woman tries to find work, but her past meets her everywhere; employer, neighbour, family all carry the same information and behave the same way. The film refuses the rescue narrative: the law takes women out of an institution without producing anywhere for them to go. The cast is strong, with Kyoko Kagawa and Chikage Awashima among them. Tanaka's direction is measured, staying close to social realism without sliding into melodrama. In a period with almost no women directors, this is one of very few films made about women's control over their work and their bodies. Who it's for: those interested in Japanese film history and in questions of gender. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a hopeful close; the film ends by saying the system does not work.