Woman in the Dunes

Woman in the Dunes
Japanese theatrical poster
Directed by	Hiroshi Teshigahara
Produced by	Kiichi Ichikawa Tadashi Ōno
Written by	Kōbō Abe
Starring	Eiji Okada Kyōko Kishida
Music by	Toru Takemitsu
Cinematography	Hiroshi Segawa
Edited by	Fusako Shuzui
Distributed by	Toho
Release dates	February 15, 1964 (1964-02-15)
Running time	123 minutes 147 minutes (director's cut)
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Budget	$100,000

Woman in the Dunes or Woman of the Dunes (砂の女, Suna no Onna, "Sand woman") is a 1964 Japanese film directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and starring Eiji Okada and Kyōko Kishida. It received positive critical reviews and was nominated for two Academy Awards. The screenplay for the film was adapted by Kōbō Abe from his 1962 novel.

Plot

A schoolteacher, Junpei Niki (Eiji Okada), is on an expedition to collect insects that inhabit sand dunes. When he misses the last bus, the villagers suggest that he stay the night. They guide him down a rope ladder to a house in a sand quarry where a young widow (Kyōko Kishida) lives alone. She is employed by the villagers to dig sand for sale and to save the house from burial in the advancing sand.

When Junpei tries to leave the next morning, he finds the ladder removed. The villagers expect him to become the woman's husband to assist her in digging sand and to have a child with her. Junpei initially tries to climb the sand, but it keeps collapsing. Junpei becomes the widow's lover but still desperately yearns to leave. One morning, using an improvised grappling hook, he escapes from the sand dune and starts running while being chased by the villagers. However, he is unfamiliar with the geography of the area and eventually gets trapped in quicksand. The villagers free him from the quicksand and then return him to the house.

Eventually, Junpei resigns himself to his fate. He requests time to watch the nearby sea and the villagers offer to grant it if he makes love to the woman while they watch, but she fends him off. Through his persistent effort to trap a crow as a messenger, he discovers a way to draw water from the damp sand at night and becomes absorbed in the task of perfecting the technique. When it is discovered that the woman is pregnant, Junpei is given a chance to escape, but he chooses to stay in the dune. A report after seven years, written by the police and signed by his mother, has declared him missing.

Cast

• Eiji Okada – Entomologist Niki Junpei
• Kyōko Kishida – Woman
• Hiroko Itō – Entomologist's wife
• Kōji Mitsui
• Sen Yano
• Ginzō Sekiguchi

Critical reception

The film has a rating of 100% on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 25 critical reviews with an average rating of 8.7 out of 10.^[1]

Roger Ebert wrote "Woman in the Dunes is a modern version of the myth of Sisyphus, the man condemned by the gods to spend eternity rolling a boulder to the top of a hill, only to see it roll back down."^[2] Strictly Film School describes it as "a spare and haunting allegory for human existence".^[3] According to Max Tessier, the main theme of the film is the desire to escape from society.^[4]

The film's composer, Toru Takemitsu, was praised. Nathaniel Thompson wrote, "[Takemitsu's] often jarring, experimental music here is almost a character unto itself, insinuating itself into the fabric of the celluloid as imperceptibly as the sand."^[5]

Awards

The film won the Special Jury Prize at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival^[6] and, somewhat unusually for an avant-garde film, was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in the same year (losing out to Italian film Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow).^[7] In 1965, Teshigahara was nominated for the Best Director Oscar (losing to Robert Wise for The Sound of Music). In 1967, the film won the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.

See also

• List of Japanese submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of submissions to the 37th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film

References

External links

• Woman in the Dunes at the Internet Movie Database
• Woman in the Dunes at AllMovie
• Woman in the Dunes at the Japanese Movie Database (Japanese)