A Woman's Place is about a large family: an elderly couple who run a small market and their six adult children, all of whom except for one are women. The parents look on in bemused consternation as their offspring stumble through life. Three of the children are unmarried and are looking to change that with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The three oldest offspring are married but the stresses of employment and philandering don't make for the strongest case for matrimony. And then there is Yoshiko (played by Hideko Takamine) who was married to a son who has died before the movie begins. The parents treat her like another daughter while many of the other family members take her for granted and treat her almost like a servant. Add to this a number of other in-laws, grandchildren and other relatives and you have a pretty large cast of characters to keep track of.
The movie is fairly plotless, as most of the movie is taken up with just keeping track of the characters as they go about their lives. The tone is lighter than most of the other Naruse movies I have seen but it doesn't stay that way as an element of sadness takes hold by the end. Overall, this almost feels more like an Ozu movie than a Naruse one, but that is not a complaint. It is a melding of the best of both directors.
