A Woman of Rumor (Uwasa no Onna)

Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi. 1954, 83 mins. 35mm print from the Japan Foundation. With Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiko Kuga, Tomoemon Otani. Hatsuko is the proprietress of a Kyoto geisha house, and her profession is a source of humiliation to her daughter, Yukiko, who returns home shamefaced after a suicide attempt. The fault lines between the women only grow wider when both fall in love with the same young doctor, who looks after the working girls at the house. Sadly, Tanaka’s relationship with Mizoguchi soured on the set, and this was the last of the fifteen films that they made together—a body of work that taken altogether forms one of the most impressive teamings in cinema, to which A Woman of Rumor is a fitting curtain call.

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