"The exquisite sorrow of being alive"
Kinuyo Tanaka's Forever a Woman, aka The Eternal Breasts (1955)
PRACTICAL INFORMATION:
The screening will take place the 18th of September at Bubblan, Fiskhamnsgatan 41B Kajskjul 46, Göteborg. The screening will start at 7 pm and the venue will open at 5.30 pm. We will serve some food for reasonable price and play film music to get us In The Mood For Cinema (pun intended). The number of seats is limited so be sure to book by sending an email to: kuf.kontakt@gmail.com
Entrance fee is 60 SEK for film club members only: register to the club by leaving your name and email directly at the door, or through mail when you book your seat.
Here you can find the Facebook event.
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Once again, Welcome Back to No Home Movies. We are starting our second season by following the footsteps of fellow cinephiles and film curators around the globe that this year have celebrated the career of actor-director Kinuyo Tanaka: “one of the most famous actresses of Japanese cinema and also one of its least-known filmmakers”.
From Japan to New York, Los Angeles and Bologna, retrospectives have screened the newly restored films of Tanaka alongside classic Japanese gems by Ozu and Mizoguchi in which she starred: well-known features and acclaimed masterpieces such as The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu (1953) and Naruse’s Mother (1952).
Now is Bubblan’s turn to shed the light on this overlooked director and in particular on her most well-known feature: Forever a Woman (1955). We would have loved to show all 6 films in order to explore the way the director tackled, with deep sensitivity and exquisite style, issues connected to the condition of being a woman in a patriarchal society; protagonists such as prostitutes and social outcast; forbidden love and moral or other social taboos. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to find these films, their distribution has been lacking and it is only now, thanks to the new restorations, that we might be able to have proper releases both in theaters and for home viewing.
We hope these will reach us soon enough, but we felt the urge not to wait and to instead share with you this gem by the auteur that Kanaka is. In this post I would like to recommend, first of all, the always instructive Criterion Current’s post by David Hudson which goes through Kanaka’s oeuvre in a concise fashion. Similarly, Melissa Anderson on 4columns gives us a brilliant overview and highlights important aspects of Kanaka’s commitment to cinema:
“Despite these triumphs, though, Tanaka, by then in her forties, would see diminishing opportunities to play compelling parts (she continued to act until 1976, the year before she died at age sixty-seven of a brain tumor). Spouseless her whole life, she was fond of saying that she “chose to marry cinema.” Her transition to directing was one way to reinvigorate those vows, a move made possible in part by the new rights and freedoms given to women that were codified in Japan’s postwar constitution. “Women’s advancement became evident in every aspect of society, including the entrance of women in parliament. . . I too felt like trying to do something new by working as a female director,” Tanaka once said”.
A true passion for the medium by an auteur who was deeply rooted in the aesthetic sensibilities of Japan’s golden age of cinema from the 50s: such as a profound humanism and a respect for the sublime, contemplative and ecstatic qualities of human suffering, sorrow and desire.
The depiction of women throughout these complex lenses was not unseen at that time: Kenjii Mizoguchi has always been known as one of the most interested in the female experience, even though a strong duality can be observed throughout his career which has made people regard him as either proto- or anti-feminist (notably, he was one of Tanaka’s peers who strongly opposed her desire to direct).
Ozu and Naruse were also very keen to put, more than once, female protagonists at the forefront of their stories.
However, I believe and feel that Tanaka goes a step further and this can be clearly seen and felt in Forever a Woman. A “bold and poetic” feature, “based on the life of the tanka poet Fumiko Nakajo, with a screenplay by Sumie Tanaka”, “heartrending and strikingly shot, evocatively incorporating reflections, windows and corridors. A complex, vibrant character, Fumiko grapples with divorce and the challenges of motherhood, writing poetry and expressing love and sexuality while facing breast cancer”. (Kristin M. Jones)
Without going too much further into the details and qualities of the film I want to conclude with the words of the aforementioned brilliant film writer Andersson which will give you a brief understanding of the plot and thus a sense of why it was indeed something very unique for its time:
“no film by Tanaka quite matches the devastating power of her third, Forever a Woman (1955), sometimes known as The Eternal Breasts. Inspired by the real, too-short life of a lauded tanka poet, Tanaka’s movie centers on Fumiko (Yumeji Tsukioka), the beleaguered wife of a self-pitying philanderer and the mother of two small children, who finds some solace in workshopping her verse at her poetry club. Shortly after divorce frees her from her tyrannical spouse, she is diagnosed with breast cancer — a condition treated with stark candor in Tanaka’s film, never more so than during the scene set in the operating room where Fumiko undergoes a double mastectomy. She assuages her pain by devoting herself more fervently to her work — one of her poems is titled “Lost Bosom” — which soon attracts the attention, and more, of a handsome journalist (Ryōji Hayama).
Ailing, Fumiko burns with passion “I want to die as the sinful human I am” she cries out. As both an actress and a director, Tanaka never lets us forget the exquisite sorrow of being alive”.
I hope to see you at Bubblan this Sunday! Don’t forget to book your seat by mailing at kuf.kontakt@gmail.com