Sudden Rain

The marriage of Fumiko and Ryotaro has gone stale. They argue constantly about what to do on a day off, or about her cutting a recipe out of the newspaper before he has finished reading it. Two people witness the bickering: Ayako, her niece, who comes round to complain about her own husband’s indifference, and the neighbours who have just moved in. Without manufacturing any crisis, Naruse shows where a marriage has arrived through the smallest daily details; nobody shouts, nobody leaves, and everything is visible. The decision between leaving and staying is never quite taken either; the day simply passes. Setsuko Hara and Shuji Sano appear in the ninety one minute Japanese film, completed in 1956.