Summary
Remarkable espionage melodrama in Japan in 1940, which unfolds to the rhythm of the vicissitudes of the couple of the protagonist marriage, in a perfect combination of both plots.
Review:
Yusako Fukuhara (Issey Takahashi) is a wealthy cloth merchant who lives with his wife Satoko (Yu Ahoi) in Kobe. It is 1940, shortly before Japan joined the Axis with Germany and Italy at a time when the country is traversed by a nationalist and traditionalist wave, with surveillance of customs and which is suspicious of westernized Japanese, as they both are. On the other hand, Satoko intervenes as an actress in homemade crime videos that her husband films. Yusako and Satoko constitute a westernized marriage and he frequently deals with foreign clients. When a British client of hers is accused of espionage, the marriage falls in the crosshairs of the military, in particular Yasuharu Tsumori, a new squad leader (Masahiro Higashide), who was Satoko's youthful love. Yusako's immediate business trip to Manchuria will raise suspicions and trigger subsequent events.
Where does this spy melodrama actually begin? Where is the tip of his intrigue? This is one of the strengths of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film and one of his basic questions, since the story is developed from Satoko's point of view. It is not a complicated and overwhelming puzzle posed from the beginning as such, but rather a succession of veils of an espionage intrigue that delicately fall depending on the dynamics of the couple, to the rhythm of the distrust, jealousy and loyalties that Satoko is experiencing, who from a protected and childish role begins to play a more active role in the relationship, while the domestic placidity of the story can turn to horror. This structure and tone, added to the time in which the story takes place and its delightful reconstruction, bring the film closer to Hitchcock's universe.
Kurosawa leads us with his film to a kind of prodigious coda, where he gives an account of History with an admirable visual power.
