The Insect Woman

Tome is born in 1918 in a poor village in Tohoku. The film follows her across more than forty years: field work, a factory, domestic service, postwar Tokyo, prostitution, and finally running a house of her own. She climbs step by step, and every step is taken on somebody. Shohei Imamura's gaze offers neither pity nor admiration. The original title translates as entomological chronicles of Japan, and the choice is deliberate. She is presented as an organism that goes around every obstacle, changes direction and survives. There is no moral verdict, only observation. Sachiko Hidari won the Silver Bear for best actress at the fourteenth Berlin film festival for this, carrying four decades of a life in one body. The difficulty is that across a hundred and twenty three minutes it offers no emotional relief, the editing moves in hard cuts, and much of what happens to her is shown directly. Who it is for: admirers of the social vein of Japanese cinema. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a sympathetic protagonist.