Suna no onna (1964)

User Rating:

8.2/10   

Director:

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Writers:

Kôbô Abe (novel)
Kôbô Abe (screenplay)

Release Date:

25 October 1964 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

Haunting. Erotic. Unforgettable.

Plot:

An amateur entomologist searching for insects by the sea is trapped by local villagers into living with...

Plot Keywords:

Mysterious Woman | Sand Dune | Sand | Insect | Dune

Awards:

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 9 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Eiji Okada	...	Entomologist Niki Jumpei
Kyôko Kishida	...	Woman
Hiroko Ito	...	Entomologist's wife (in flashbacks)
Koji Mitsui
Sen Yano
Ginzô Sekiguchi
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Kiyohiko Ichiha
Hideo Kanze
Hiroyuki Nishimoto
Tamotsu Tamura

Also Known As:

Woman in the Dunes (International: English title)
Woman of the Dunes (International: English title)

Runtime:

123 min | 147 min (director's cut)

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Netherlands:12 | UK:15 (re-rating) (1992) | UK:X (original rating) | Norway:15 (TV rating) | West Germany:18

Company:

Toho Film (Eiga) Co. Ltd.

Quotes:

Entomologist Niki Jumpei: Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?

Movie Connections:

Featured in Music for the Movies: Tôru Takemitsu (1994)

An unsettling paradox.

This film is very eerie, disturbing, scary, and gripping. It is made in a style very similar to that of a old Twilight Zone episode. The film is about an entemoligist who takes a vacation to catch bugs in a desert area near the sea. He misses the last bus out so he spends the night in a woman's hut at the bottom of a deep pit. She is part of a slave labor group who must dig to keep the town from being burried by the sand. The next morning, he relizes that he's been trapped there for the rest of life. At first he loathes the woman. He ties her up and refuses to shovel so they will let him go. They then give him some sake, which makes him thristy. The water is all gone and the man almost dies of thirst. The man agrees to start working again. He finds that he loves the woman and actually begins to enjoy being confined. This is haunting, erotic Japanese cinema at is absolute best. Hiroshi Teshigahara is an exellent filmaker, it's almost incredible that filmaking was only a small fad of his and he was mostly interested in flower arranging. This is very much a horror film. The monster is the sand. The sand is portrayed here as an unstoppable force, a sort of Godzilla. The sand also causes strange supernatural occurances. My rating: ***** out of *****.