A sake factory worker on holiday returns to his home town, where he rapes the wife of one of his co-workers in the forest. The other man returns home to find his wife changed and suspects that she has been unfaithful.
Direction
Imai's unflinching gaze refuses to flinch from complicity.
Acting
Sakuma's silences speak entire novels of violation.
Cinematography
Snow and forest become characters of their own.
Director
Tadashi Imai
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Imai was a rare leftist voice in 1960s Japanese cinema, and this film's critique of rural patriarchy was controversial enough to limit its distribution.
The rape occurs off-screen in the forest's white blindness — Imai understood that violence unseen can haunt longer than violence shown, and the film never recovers from that silence.
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