What Did the Lady Forget?

Michiko Kuwano

Yasujirō Ozu's What Did the Lady Forget?, from 1937, is a slight and short, yet engrossing domestic comedy. Komiya is a mild-mannered medical professor who is hen-pecked by his wife, Tokiko. Their domestic routine is upended by the appearance of their niece, Setsuko (Michiko Kuwano), who is visiting from Osaka. Setsuko's behavior and appearance, she wears Western style clothes while smoking and drinking openly, is an affront to the more traditional femininity displayed by the housewives in Tokiko's bourgeoise circle. They live a life of circumscribed routine that Setsuko finds stifling. She gets Komiya to loosen up a bit, he agrees to take her to a geisha house, and assert himself more in his relationship with his wife. Tokiko, for her part, responds positively to her more self-assured husband and domestic tranquility and equilibrium are regained.  

If that summary was all there was to What Did the Lady Forget?, then it wouldn't be all that different from most other domestic comedies of the 1930s, be they made in Japan or Hollywood. However, the exactitude of Ozu's camera placement and mise-en-scene is breathtaking. Scattered amongst the bric a brac on the screen, we see and hear repeated signs of Western influence upon Japan: baseball, Marlene Dietrich, Johnny Walker, Vat 69, Frederic March, William Powell, etc. Ozu also perks up this fairly staid  and set bound affair with little doodles of life as it is lived: lingering over a boy throwing a ball at a wall or Komiya playfully balancing a newspaper. 

What really sets this film apart is Ozu's inventive use of the of the fields of view within the frame. Almost every shot utilizes the foreground, middle ground, and background. The virtuosity displayed is not an end in itself, but is used to comment on the action. When Setsuko stumbles through the house after a drunken revel, from background to foreground in a fixed shot, she is literally and figuratively upsetting the domestic order. A later shot from the same angle, of the lights going off in the house, celebrates the repair of that domestic order. When his characters go out of doors, Ozu's tracking shots express the exhilaration of people moving freely.

Some of the acting is constrained by conventional nature of the story. Komiya's meekness and Tokiko's dourness are overly typed. That makes Michiko's transgressive performance as Setsuko seem all the more like a breath of fresh air. It is obvious that Ozu was entranced by this refreshing new type of woman, though the scenario suggests she might just have to knuckle under when she accepts the proposal of her suitor. The ruptures that modernity would cause to traditional Japanese society would be further explored by Ozu in his post-war work, but What Did the Lady Forget? is a harbinger of things to come. Sadly, Ms. Kuwano's contributions to Japanese cinema would be cut short. She would die from the complications of an ectopic pregnancy in 1946. She was only 31.

Stray Dogs

Tsai Ming Liang's Stray Dogs nimbly balances upon the fine line between cinematic sublimity and art film monotony. I'm still kind of on the fence about this film myself. This 2013 film ostensibly follows the travails of homeless Taiwanese family of four struggling to survive. Dad is a sign waver at a busy intersection, Mom has a McJob at a Costco type emporium. They live in an abandoned apartment building. They scrounge what they can: the kids scarf up free samples at the super mart while Mom stocks up on toilet paper in the public facilities. Somehow they barely uphold their dignity within a bustling and unyielding capitalistic market place.

Yet, this film is not as cut and dried as a plot summary would make it appear. The takes are almost all long and fixed, sometimes lasting five minutes or so. Continuity is eschewed to the extent that three different actresses portray "Mom". The film is truly defined not by its fleeting narrative but by the director's utilization of space. The shots of the sign holders emphasize how little territory they are allotted in the sprawling metropolis. Every man is left to himself to burrow their own warren. Yet, Tsai Ming-liang also shows us beauty within negative space. The camera pans along a pock marked concrete wall as a fairy tale is read or focuses on the rustling river instead of a child. It all adds up, at least, to one distancing technique too many. 

As John Berryman in Dream Song #14 put it, "Life, friends, is boring." and modern art cinema has often explored boredom. Warhol looms large in this, of course, but Stray Dogs' sequence with Mom #2 scrubbing the tub reminded me of the numerous chores Delphine Seyrig plods through in Chantal Ackerman's Jeanne Dielman.... I'm sure most viewers will want to check out of Stray Dogs after the first hour and I will admit that I didn't get much out of the film conceptually after the first sixty minutes or so. Some surreal beauty emerges, though. Because the director shoots in real time with an objective, even dull gaze, the dream sequences are especially unsettling in their realness and tactility. Stray Dogs is an unsparing film the viewer must meet halfway, as if at an art installation. 

Quick Takes, March 2025

Mikey Madison

Enough bouquets have been bestowed upon Sean Baker's Anora that I am not going to belabor the point. The players are uniformly superb. As with the ignored and equally gripping Red Rocket, Anora points towards the growth of Baker as a visual artist. However, it is Mr. Baker's editing that gives the right amount of propulsion to what is essentially a tale concerning transactional relationships and romantic disillusion. It is not a romantic comedy, it upends romantic comedy.

Cody Calahan's Vicious Fun, from 2020, is a Canadian comedy horror film that aims for yuks rather than chills. A nerdy horror scribe (oxymoronic?) stumbles upon a serial killer support group in 1983 with fatal results. Calahan lovingly apes the tone and look of 80s horror in this slight, but winning film. The ensemble work is first class, particularly Evan Marsh, a master of spit takes, Amber Goldfarb, Ari Millen, and David Koechner.

Gints Zilbalodis' Flow, the Latvian film which recently won Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, follows the adventures of a cat a in flood filled world devoid of humans. The film meanders pleasantly. The lack of a strong narrative lets the viewer be immersed in Zilbalodis' 360 degree world building which is similar to that of a video game.

Scott Derrickson's The Gorge, currently streaming on Apple+, is mindless, yet enjoyable sci-fi pulp. The film stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Taylor as professional assassins tasked with culling mutants which were the result of a chemical weapons mishap. Thanks to the chemistry of the two leads, the film succeeds as a romance even though its premise is thoroughly idiotic. Ms. Taylor-Joy, in particular, has never been as playful and frisky. Sigourney Weaver is in support in a paycheck role.

Errol Morris' Chaos: The Manson Murders is a succinct summation of the notorious cases. Youngsters with little knowledge of these examples of grisly true crime and 60s paranoia will be the most edified. Morris is still a nervy director and he gives the film the tabloid style the subject demands: the viewer is treated to shots of glass eyes and maggots. The primary talking head (Tom O'Neill), a co-writer of the book which is the basis of the film, attempts to link Manson with the CIA's MKUltra program. The direct link between the two, even Mr. O'Neill admits, has not emerged.

Ken Loach's The Old Oak, like all the British veteran's films, teeters on a tightrope between warm humanism and sententious socialist solidarity. A northern English community welcomes Syrian refugees, some warmly, like the owner of a titular pub, and some not so warmly. Loach types his nationalistic villains so broadly that they resemble cartoons. The acting varies wildly. I did like the Durham Cathedral sequence and the concluding glimpse of that town's Miners Gala. The latter would prove to be a fitting cap to his career if this should prove to be his swan song. I will give Loach credit for staying true to his Marxist principles even to the point of getting tossed out of the UK Labour party.

Dominque Abel and Fiona Martin's The Falling Star is a lame Belgian comedy, seemingly a mixture of Tati, Kaurismäki, and Quaaludes. The cinematography and production design are assuredly smart, yet the picture is thoroughly unenjoyable. The spirited cast is up for anything, especially dance numbers, but the plot wouldn't pass muster for a Monogram Pictures musical. A film that strains for humor. 

Edward Berger's Conclave is a thriller that doesn't thrill. Full of middlebrow musings on impotent issues, it is the most boring commercial film to feature the Sistine Chapel since Carol Reed's The Agony and the Ecstasy. The elderly actors make this static spectacle watchable, particularly Stanley Tucci, but Berger's direction is as anodyne as it was in his version of All Quiet on the Western Front. The film's moral stands, against religious fundamentalism and gender rigidity, are feeble rather than febrile. Ultimately, an underwhelming filmic experience.

Aram Avakian's 11 Harrowhouse, from 1974, is a British based heist film that lands with a resounding thud. Part of a brace of films from that era that attempted to rethink noir conventions (including but not limited to Play It Again, Sam, Chinatown, Gumshoe, Pulp, The Sting, and The Long Goodbye), the film's attempts at humor and suspense are woeful. Leads Charles Grodin and Candace Bergen have only a negative chemistry. Trevor Howard overacts as if he was in a hurry to leave the set. Grace notes are provided by James Mason and John Gielgud, but this disaster finished Avakian's career as a commercial director. He was a very good editor. A flick to avoid.