What Did the Lady Forget? (“Shukujo wa nani o wasureta ka”)
Directed by Yasujirô Ozu
Written by Yasujirô Ozu and Akira Fushimi
1937/Japan
Shôchiku Eiga
First viewing
[box] Watching Fantasia (1940), I understood we could never win the war. “These people seem to like complications”, I thought to myself. — Yasujiro Ozu[/box]
This obscure comedy by master Yasurjiro Ozu had me chortling out loud.
Wealthy medical professor Dr. Komiya is henpecked at home. His wife forces him out of the house to go golfing on the weekend and asks his niece to stay home to watch the place while she goes to the theater with her lady friends. Both secretly rebel and end up meeting at a bar. The thoroughly modern niece gets tipsy and takes her uncle to a geisha house. She is raked over the coals when she comes home drunk and accompanied by one of the doctor’s students. The doctor spends the night with the student (apparently golfing is an overnight trip) but his wife easily catches him in his lie. All is straightened out in a very amusing way.
Very little happens in this film but all the incidents are fresh and funny and the resolution is simultaneously philosophical and amusing. The characteristic Ozu style is fully in evidence. Recommended.
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