The Woman with Two Heads: A Shadow Movie (1977) is a strange, sepia-toned experimental short film by underground director Shuji Terayama. The details of the plot are hard to pinpoint, as the film itself is hardly consistent on your first viewing. It apparently focuses on a modern family and apparently has feminist undertones. The characters' shadows live in a world of their own; a man stands up from a chair, but his shadow remains sitting. A married couple lies idly in their bed, but their shadows are having sex. Finally, the place is revealed to be a film set with cameras and operators all over the place. There's also a metal circle toy (the name escapes me) in the beginning, also used in Terayama's short The Eraser.
This movie is innovative for its use of shadows, but is frustratingly incomprehensible without any context and the repetitive piano music grows old fast.
This movie is innovative for its use of shadows, but is frustratingly incomprehensible without any context and the repetitive piano music grows old fast.
