GOTTA SEE IT # 21 - "WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS"
“WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS”
Starring: Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Reiko Dan, Tatsuya Nakadai, Daisuke Kato, Ganjiro Nakamura, Eitaro Ozawa, Keiko Awaji.
Written by: Ryuzo Kikushima
Directed by: Mikio Naruse
B & W – 1960
111 mins
Japan
Mama: Bars in the daytime are like women without makeup.
You can’t pretend to feel something you don’t genuinely feel. You can come close to replicating the feeling and fooling others, but you’d have a hell of a time pulling the wool over your own eyes - the few who can become sociopaths, murderers and entertainment reporters. We all pretend to feel something we don’t, from time to time, to avoid awkward or potentially volatile social situations. Or we engage in pretending to keep our raw emotions from busting loose and turning us into a tear-eyed, red-faced mess. It’s a survival mechanism. We pretend because, sometimes, being our real self is just too much to take. But, we never fool ourselves. We always feel the gap between pretend and real. The wider that gap gets, and the longer we feel it, the more we are separated from our true selves.
Mama (Hideko Takamine) is what you could call a professional pretender. She is a hostess at the Lilac Bar in post war Japan. A hostess is a woman who is employed by a bar to pretend to be interested, charmed, sexually attracted to the wealthy businessmen who come to get drunk and have their very formidable egos stroked. The women are not exactly prostitutes, though, a sexual relationship can develop. They are more like pretend girlfriends who are always perky and attentive and dazzled by every single word that comes out of a man’s mouth. One of the finest hostesses at the Lilac bar, Mama (Hideko Takamine)has been doing this for 5 years and she has only lasted that long because she hasn’t allowed her real feelings to surface. She is all smiles and fake warmth and it all functions as a sort of therapy that has helped, and continues to help her, if not get over her husband’s death, at least keep the pain at bay. She is in a suspended state – between old emotions she hasn’t fully processed and new emotions she continually pushes away.
The men depicted in this film are all pathetic in one way or another. They are cruel, deceptive, exploitive, hypocritical and parasitic. This is no surprise because the bulk of these men are customers or managers of the hostesses and, therefore, see them as an object to exploit for completely self-serving reasons. But the truly sad thing about Mama’s life is that, even far away from the hollow hostess world, both her mother and her brother treat her just as badly. So, Mama has fake relationships with strangers inside of the bars in which she works and fake relationships with family outside of the bars in which she lives. In one sad scene, her brother, coming to her, yet again, to borrow money, promises her that this is the very last time. To prove it, he tells her that he’s decided to cut ties with her all together. So, he’s willing to end the relationship with his sister just so he can prove to her that he’ll never ask for money again in order to get her to give him money this time. It’s a cold and cruel moment, made all the more so by his casual demeanour and complete ignorance of the pain he’s causing.
A sober study of male dominance, female objectification and the limited options that women faced in post-war Japan, WAWATS is a straight forward, low-key film featuring measured performances and a simple, uncluttered plot. In quietly assembled scenes, shot in beautiful black and white widescreen photography, what is proven is that, sometimes, pretending is one's only real option.
Starring: Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Reiko Dan, Tatsuya Nakadai, Daisuke Kato, Ganjiro Nakamura, Eitaro Ozawa, Keiko Awaji.
Written by: Ryuzo Kikushima
Directed by: Mikio Naruse
B & W – 1960
111 mins
Japan
Mama: Bars in the daytime are like women without makeup.
You can’t pretend to feel something you don’t genuinely feel. You can come close to replicating the feeling and fooling others, but you’d have a hell of a time pulling the wool over your own eyes - the few who can become sociopaths, murderers and entertainment reporters. We all pretend to feel something we don’t, from time to time, to avoid awkward or potentially volatile social situations. Or we engage in pretending to keep our raw emotions from busting loose and turning us into a tear-eyed, red-faced mess. It’s a survival mechanism. We pretend because, sometimes, being our real self is just too much to take. But, we never fool ourselves. We always feel the gap between pretend and real. The wider that gap gets, and the longer we feel it, the more we are separated from our true selves.
Mama (Hideko Takamine) is what you could call a professional pretender. She is a hostess at the Lilac Bar in post war Japan. A hostess is a woman who is employed by a bar to pretend to be interested, charmed, sexually attracted to the wealthy businessmen who come to get drunk and have their very formidable egos stroked. The women are not exactly prostitutes, though, a sexual relationship can develop. They are more like pretend girlfriends who are always perky and attentive and dazzled by every single word that comes out of a man’s mouth. One of the finest hostesses at the Lilac bar, Mama (Hideko Takamine)has been doing this for 5 years and she has only lasted that long because she hasn’t allowed her real feelings to surface. She is all smiles and fake warmth and it all functions as a sort of therapy that has helped, and continues to help her, if not get over her husband’s death, at least keep the pain at bay. She is in a suspended state – between old emotions she hasn’t fully processed and new emotions she continually pushes away.
The men depicted in this film are all pathetic in one way or another. They are cruel, deceptive, exploitive, hypocritical and parasitic. This is no surprise because the bulk of these men are customers or managers of the hostesses and, therefore, see them as an object to exploit for completely self-serving reasons. But the truly sad thing about Mama’s life is that, even far away from the hollow hostess world, both her mother and her brother treat her just as badly. So, Mama has fake relationships with strangers inside of the bars in which she works and fake relationships with family outside of the bars in which she lives. In one sad scene, her brother, coming to her, yet again, to borrow money, promises her that this is the very last time. To prove it, he tells her that he’s decided to cut ties with her all together. So, he’s willing to end the relationship with his sister just so he can prove to her that he’ll never ask for money again in order to get her to give him money this time. It’s a cold and cruel moment, made all the more so by his casual demeanour and complete ignorance of the pain he’s causing.
A sober study of male dominance, female objectification and the limited options that women faced in post-war Japan, WAWATS is a straight forward, low-key film featuring measured performances and a simple, uncluttered plot. In quietly assembled scenes, shot in beautiful black and white widescreen photography, what is proven is that, sometimes, pretending is one's only real option.
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