Kanojo to kare

From her window in a new apartment complex on the city outskirts, young housewife Naoko only notices the shantytown next door when it catches fire. Her interest in the people living there, one of whom is a former classmate of her husband doing his best to look after a blind orphaned girl and his dog, is met with suspicion and incomprehension by those around her. She soon extends her newly awakened social awareness to herself: her social isolation as a housewife and spouse to a businessman, her identity, and her place in the world. The film’s contrasts expose the deep divide between social classes: those who can partake in newly created prosperity and those who are excluded from it.

From the time his career began in the late 1950s, Susumu Hani (*1928) broke with traditional Japanese filmmaking by anchoring his films in the present and combining documentary methods with avant-garde aesthetics.