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WIFE OF A SPY is too passive with its lead character

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Written by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Tadashi Nohara, & Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring Yū Aoi, Issey Takahashi, Masahiro Higashide, & Ryōta Bandō
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Runtime: 116 minutes
Available from Kino Lorber

by Clayton Hayes, Staff Writer

Wife of a Spy, the latest film from the prolific Kiyoshi Kurosawa, is a bit of a departure from my past experiences with his work. I’m more aware of him as a genre director, like 1997’s Cure and 2001’s Pulse, but he’s also an acclaimed director of dramas such as 2008’s Tokyo Sonata. Wife of a Spy falls squarely in the latter camp, a period drama following Satoko Fukuhara (Yū Aoi) and her husband Yūsaku (Issey Takahashi), the owner of an import-export business in WWII-era Kobe, Japan. Satoko is every inch the dutiful wife: she prepares tea for guests at home, distributes gifts to employees for the New Year, and worries endlessly when Yūsaku’s business trips take him out of the country. It is during one such trip that Satoko runs into Taiji (Masahiro Higashide), a childhood friend who has become the head of the local military police, who hints that her husband may not be who he appears to be.

This leads, perhaps predictably, to lingering doubts after Yūsaku returns from Manchuria. It slowly becomes clear that it was not merely a business trip, and that Yūsaku and his nephew, Fumio (Ryōta Bandō), returned with evidence of military experimentation with biological weapons on civilian subjects. Satoko must choose where to place her trust - in her husband who has deceived her or in the increasingly-militaristic and paranoid state.

I really appreciated the visual flair that Kurosawa and the crew brought to the film. Satoko’s doubts and a general air of uncertainty seem to be underlined by a visual theme of light and dark: Characters move from light into shadow as the converse; Light and dark pieces arranged on a chessboard, themselves half in shadow; Bright sunlight shines directly into the lens, often through windows, overwhelming scenes and obscuring the audience’s view. The colors of the film also seem to ebb and flow as Satoko becomes more or less sure of the people around her, muted when she’s being kept at arm’s length and vivid when she’s being trusted with their confidence.

Unfortunately, I did not feel that that the narrative matched the care and interest put into the film’s visual storytelling. Nor was Yū Aoi, who puts in a wonderful performance as Satoko, served very well by her character. She is a pawn used by Yūsaku and Taiji, each against the other, and moves according to their whims seemingly without thought. Even accepting that loyalty to her husband is her sole motivation, she acts with agency only one time that I can remember: She gives Fumio up to Taiji and the military police, knowing her nephew will insist he acted alone, in order to deflect suspicion from her husband. It happens about halfway through the film (and leads to a very effective torture scene) and I had hoped it signaled a shift towards a more compelling character for Satoko.

I think that, in theory, the themes Wife of a Spy attempts to tackle are interesting ones. We see a woman whose identity is subsumed in being a wife, who trusts implicitly in men who hold positions of authority around her. As the audience discovers, none of the men in Satoko’s life deserved that trust. We see her betrayed time and time again, by her husband and by her country, neither of which seem to have any concern for her well-being or those of women (and children) more generally. The penultimate scene really drives this point home in a particularly haunting way: As a nighttime air raid hits Kobe, Satoko walks barefoot out into the fire and destruction as the screams and cries of women and babies echo in our ears.

Despite some tantalizing glimpses, the film never felt like it figured out how to turn these themes into something compelling. In the end, Satoko remains a frustratingly passive character in her own story and even Aoi’s excellent work in the role isn’t enough to overcome this.