Villon's Wife

The film is set in Tokyo after the war. At its centre are a writer and his wife. His talent is not in question, but he is a man taking his own life apart; the drink and the other relationships shake the household too. The account still looks not at the writer himself but at the woman who loves him. What she carries is the real subject of the film. The work shows that burden as it is, without asking for pity. The period is the disordered years that came straight after the war. The story is adapted from a novel Osamu Dazai published in 1947, based in part on his own life. Takako Matsu and Tadanobu Asano take the leads in Kichitaro Negishi’s Japanese film of 2009.