Wednesday, May 9, 2018

The Insect Woman (1963)


Nikkatsu
Directed by Shohei Imamura
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb Wikipedia
(DVD, Criterion Collection)

Illegitimate farmer's daughter grows up repressed and possibly sexually abused by her dope of a father. Pregnant, she moves to the big city for a factory job, becoming the mistress of an American GI. He leaves and she ends up working in a house of prostitution. She eventually starts her own "call girl" business on the side using her friends in the brothel. Her abandoned daughter shows up and also gets involved. However she is exposed by one of her own ambitious girls and is forced into the streets to make her own way. Imamura's attempt to parallel her life with contemporaneous events in Japanese history is a distraction. The plot is all over the place and difficult to follow. Characters come and go at a dizzying pace. Imamura frequently indulges in exploitative imagery such as adult breast feeding. There is potential here, but Imamura seems to drop the ball.

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