Budapest Classic Film Marathon: Forever a Woman

Director: Kinuyo Tanaka

Screenplay by Yasujirô Ozu, Ryôsuke Saitô
Director of photography: Shigeyoshi Mine
Music by Takanobu Saitô
Cast: Chishû Ryû, Shûji Sano, Hisako Yamane

Women’s perspective / Kinuyo Tanaka, a Woman We Talk About 

Introduction: Attila Varró, film critic

Fumiko suffers in a terrible marriage with her husband, who is unable to accept that she has found her place in poetry. Once they are divorced, Fumiko’s poetry published in a Tokyo paper proves hugely popular, but then it transpires she has advanced stage breast cancer. The woman who writes poems embedded in her own personal world is traumatized when she has a double mastectomy. In this, her third film, Kinuyo Tanaka processes the story of the poetess Fumiko Nakajō. Issues of femininity, motherhood, repressed desires, remorse deriving from social expectations and personal freedom are all unpacked in the film, in which the director processes recurring themes of her oeuvre in relation to the true story of the poetess.

More information about the Budapest Classic Film Marathon's program in Uránia >>