Sudden Rain

Sudden Rain (驟雨, Shūu) is a 1956 Japanese comedy-drama film directed by Mikio Naruse. It is based on a play by Kunio Kishida.[1][2][3]

Shūu
Japanese movie poster
驟雨
Directed byMikio Naruse
Written by
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyMasao Tamai
Edited byEiji Ooi
Music byIchirō Saitō
Production
company
Toho
Distributed byToho
Release date
  • 14 January 1956 (1956-01-14) (Japan)[1][2]
Running time
90 minutes[1][2]
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese

Plot

The marriage of Fumiko and Ryōtarō Namiki has gone stale, with both of them constantly arguing about what to do on a day off, or her cutting out cooking recipes from the newspaper before he finished reading it. Their animosities are witnessed by Fumiko's niece Ayako, who pays a visit to complain about her own husband's inattentiveness, and their new neighbours, the Imasatos. When Ryōtarō's company announces the dismissal of some of their employees, a group of colleagues visits him at home and offers him to become their partner in a bar financed with their severance pay, with Fumiko serving the bar's guests. Ryōtarō throws them out and has an argument with Fumiko, declaring that he does not want his wife to take up a job. The couple contemplates a divorce and Ryōtarō's return to his hometown to work on his family's farm. The next morning, a children's balloon falls into their backyard, and Fumiko and Ryōtarō become engaged in a defiant ball throwing game, watched by the neighbours.

Cast

Reception

Naruse biographer Catherine Russell called Sudden Rain an "extraordinarily bleak film", which nonetheless "offers a poetic treatment of a dismal situation".[4] Dan Sallitt saw the film's depiction of the marital conflict as "characteristically brutal and devastating" for Naruse, despite the "light-hearted formal play".[5]

References
  1. "驟雨 (Sudden Rain)". Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese). Retrieved 28 January 2021.
  2. "驟雨 (Sudden Rain)" (in Japanese). Kinema Junpo. Retrieved 28 January 2021.
  3. Goble, Alan (1999). The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film. London, Melbourne, Munich, New Providence: Bowker-Saur. ISBN 1-85739-229-9.
  4. Russell, Catherine (2008). The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity. Durham and London: Duke University Press. p. 284. ISBN 978-0-8223-4290-8.
  5. Sallitt, Dan (5 April 2016). "Sudden Rain". A Mikio Naruse Companion. Notes on the Extant Films, 1931-1967. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
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