Woman in the Dunes

Infobox Film
name = Woman in the Dunes


image_size = 199px
caption = Japanese theatrical poster.
director = Hiroshi Teshigahara
producer = Kiichi Ichikawa
Tadashi Oono
writer = Kōbō Abe
narrator =
starring = Eiji Okada
Kyoko Kishida
music = Tōru Takemitsu
cinematography = Hiroshi Segawa
editing = Fusako Shuzui
distributor = Toho
released = flagicon|Japan February 15, 1964
flagicon|USA October 25, 1964
runtime = 123 min
147 min (director's cut)
country = Japan
language = Japanese
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id = 1:55073
imdb_id = 0058625nihongo|"Woman in the Dunes"|砂の女|"Suna no onna"|also translated as "Woman of the Dunes" is a novel by Kōbō Abe and a film based on the novel directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara. The novel was published in 1962, and the film was released in 1964. Kōbō Abe also wrote the screenplay for the film version.

The surreal and, at times, absurd nature of "Woman in the Dunes" has been compared to existentialist works such as Sartre's "No Exit" and Beckett's "Happy Days". Aside from its intriguing premise, this film is notable for the life that Teshigahara brings to the ever shifting sand, which almost becomes a character in its own right.

ynopsis

An entomologist named Niki Junpei (played in the film by Eiji Okada) is on an expedition to collect insects in an area of sand dunes. When he misses the last bus back, a group of locals suggest he stay the night in their village. They send him down a rope ladder to a house at the bottom of a sandpit, where a young widow (played by Kyoko Kishida) lives alone. She has been tasked by the villagers with digging sand to be sold to the cities, mostly under the table (sand with salt should not be used for construction purposes), and with preventing the sands from destroying the house (if her house succumbs to the desert then the other houses in the village will be threatened).

When Junpei tries to leave the next morning he finds the ladder removed. The villagers inform him that he must help the widow in her endless task of digging sand. Junpei initially tries to escape; upon failing he takes the widow captive but is forced to release her in order to receive water from the villagers.

Junpei eventually becomes the widow's lover and resigns himself to his fate. Through his persistent effort on trapping a crow for messenger, he discovers a way to draw water from the damp sand at night. He thus becomes absorbed in the task of perfecting his technology and adapts to his "trapped" life. The focus of the film shifts to the way in which the couple cope with the oppressiveness of their condition, and the power of their physical attraction in spite of— or possibly because of— their situation.

At the end of the film Junpei gets his chance to escape, but he chooses to prolong his stay in the dune, in part because the woman is already pregnant with his child. A report after seven years declaring him missing is then shown hanging from a wall, written by the police and signed by his mother Shino.

Awards

The film adaptation of "Woman in the Dunes" won the Special Jury Prize at the 1964 Cannes film festival and, somewhat unusually for an avant-garde film, was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in the same year (losing out to Italian film "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow"). In 1965 Teshigahara was nominated for the Best Director Oscar (finishing behind Robert Wise for "The Sound of Music").

External links

*
* [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980201/REVIEWS08/401010314/1023 "Woman in the Dunes" essay] by Roger Ebert
* " [http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/teshigahara.html#dunes Woman in the Dunes] " at Strictly Film School
* " [http://www.jmdb.ne.jp/1964/cn000450.htm Woman in the Dunes] " at the Japanese Movie Database
* " [http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/woman_in_the_dunes/ Woman in the Dunes] " at Rotten Tomatoes

###@@@KEY@@@###succession box
title=Special Jury Prize, Cannes
years=1964
before="Harakiri" tied with
"The Cassandra Cat"
after="Kwaidan"