18 October 2012

Woman in the Dunes (Japan, 1964)

Jumpei Niki, a Tokyo based entomologist and educator, is in a poor seaside village collecting specimens of sand insects. As it is late in the day and as he has missed the last bus back to the city, some of the local villagers suggest that he spend the night there, they offering to find him a place to stay. That place is the home of a young woman, whose house is located at the bottom of a sand pit accessible only by ladder. The next morning as he tries to leave, he finds that the ladder is gone...

Unnerving and unsettling. Woman in the Dunes is a nightmarish portrayal of a secluded life from the bottom of a sand dune. The spooky music makes for a truly eerie experience and director Hiroshi Teshigahara has done an incredible job with the filming and use of close-ups. The film is shot really beautifully. 

I love how the sand pretty much has taken over everything, it rains down on them through holes in the roof, it's all over the sweaty skin in close-ups which makes your skin crawl. Also contains one of the more unusual sex scenes I've ever seen. Hiroshi has done a splendid job of making the woman seem like a sand-dwelling insect who catches her prey and feeds on it by making it go insane down there with her, in the loneliness and the always moving waves of sand.   


Genre: Drama

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