Repast (1951)

 Mikio Naruse's "Repast"


Based on a novel by Fumiko Hayashi, Mikio Naruse's 1951 film "Repast" takes advantage of Setsuko Hara's rising stardom, as she had just done films with Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu. Her performance in "Late Spring" is something of a career-defining performance. With Naruse's "Repast," she plays an exhausted housewife who must reconcile the relationship she has with her husband after his niece comes to visit. 

Hara's Michiyo works tirelessly for her husband and now-visiting niece and on one night when she has a dinner with a friend, it becomes clear that no one is willing to put in the work she is willing to put in. The realization that being a housewife is going to completely deprive her of any happiness she may attain breaks her down and forces her to run away to Tokyo to 'think things over.' One of the writing on the film, Sumie Tanaka, wanted the film to end in their divorce. However, upon the studio's insistence, Michiyo gets back together with her husband. This change forced Tanaka to quit the project. 

I felt the film to be a very emotionally charged film and Hara's performance as Michiyo to be very gravitating. The exhaustion she feels and the existential crisis that springs forth out of it illustrates a social frustration for women at the time. This frustration is not limited to this film, as many Japanese filmmakers, like Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, were demonstrating the small, unforgiving boxes that the Japanese society and social structures were placing on women at the time. 

Overall, I very much enjoyed "Repast." It's characters were realistically flawed. It's story was incredibly relatable and its emotional interrogation of a woman's wit's end really created the necessary conflict for drama to unfold. 



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