Portrait of Madame Yuki Reviews

To be honest, it seemed to be a rather obscure movie but since it was directed by Kenji Mizoguchi and since it was available on YouTube, I thought I might as well check it out. First of all, even though the video I saw on YouTube was fine visually speaking, the subtitles were however completely messed up though. Seriously, 50% of the time, I had to figure out what the hell they were trying to say which was just so frustrating. Well, even if the circumstamces to watch it were far from being ideal, I still liked the damned thing though. The first thing I enjoyed was its visual aspect. Indeed, I wonder where in Japan they shot this movie but Mizoguchi delivered here a beautiful movie with some really neat shots. Concerning the rest of the movie, I wonder if it was supposed to be some kind of allegory of Japan in general. Indeed, you could say that Yuki Shinano represented the past of Japan and was more noble, gentle but also weak, old-fashioned and seemingly out of touch. On the other hand, her husband Naoyuki could represent modern Japan with his brutal, arrogant even decadent behavior and, yet, even if his attitude was mostly reprehensible, he was also stronger, more straightforward and seemingly more efficient than his wife. Even the way they dressed underlined this idea. Eventually, even if the makers and viewers were rooting for Yuki Shinano/traditional Japan, she was bound to loose against Naoyuki/modern Japan, even if his future prospects didn’t seem to be really bright after she was gone. Of course, I might be completely wrong here and maybe it wasn’t at all what Mizoguchi intended here. However, even if it was all fairly intriguing, to be honest, it was also rather flat after all. I mean, from the start, Yuki was introduced as being terribly miserable and submissive and her husband was introduced as being a major *sshole and, from this point on, this circle of abuse was repeated endlessly until the very end but not much else happened after all. Eventually, you wish that these characters might evolve somehow but, instead, they got stuck and it felt rather redundant at some point. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t completely work, it was still an interesting watch and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.