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Floating Clouds (1955, Jp.) (aka
Ukigumo)
In director Mikio Naruse's romantic yet tragic and
depressing social melodrama (amour fou), told in flashbacks,
and set in the years following WWII:
- the main character: Yukiko Koda (Hideko Takamine),
a young and timid Japanese typist-secretary who had just been repatriated
and returned from French Indochina to be resettled in a devastated
and defeated Tokyo, Japan
- the scene of her visit to the Tokyo home of womanizing,
opportunistic forester and agricultural surveyor Kengo Tomioka (Masayuki
Mori), who was married to an aging, sickly wife Kuniko (Chieko Nakakita)
- Yukiko hoped Kengo would fulfill his promise to divorce Kuniko
and marry her
- the flashbacks to their love affair in Japanese-occupied
Da Lat (French Indochina) during WWII, and her continued obsessive
search, blind devotion and hopeless unrequited love for him in subsequent
years
- Yukiko's life of struggle to survive (symbolic of
Japan's own post-war challenges) - including rape from her despicable
brother-in-law Sugio Iba (Isao Yamagata), prostitution as a "hostess"
in Tokyo's red-light district, an affair with an American GI (Roy James)
and with a rich man, and continued rejection from the promiscuous,
fickle and half-hearted Kengo Tomioka
- the many scenes of Yukiko's and Kengo's emotionally
detached and aimless walks or wanderings (as if floating), as they
discussed their concerns as a co-dependent couple
- the scene of gravely-ill Yukiko's ultimate death on
the rugged and rainy southern island of Yakushima when there was
finally some hope (but dashed) that Kengo might find love with her
- and his tearful denouement over Yukiko’s lifeless body
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Typist-Secretary Yukiko Koda
Yukiko with Kengo
Detached, Aimless Wanderings
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