Film Review

The Japanese Wife—old world romance with a heart of gold

     

         An Aparna Sen film for both art movie connoisseurs and lovers of poignant love stories, that is what The Japanese Wife is. A story about two people who live in two different countries & weave their lives and take it forward only through the medium of letters and chaste love. A Bengali film with English sub-titles, it manages to hold the audience’s attention through every moment of it.

      This epistolary romance is based on a novel by Kunal Basu and happens to be Aparna Sen’s first screenplay adaptation. It is about Snehamoy Chatterjee, a lonesome Maths teacher living in an interior village of the Sunderbans in Bengal and his Japanese pen wife Miyagi who lives in Yokohama. It was Miyagi who proposed marriage in this unique relationship and simple Snehamoy agrees and sends her “vermilion for the parting of the hair” to officially marry her. The endearing conversations through letters take the story forward with perfect performances by the leads played by Rahul Bose and Chigusa Tikaku. Other note worthy performances are those by Moushumi Chatterjee who was an absolute revelation  as Snehamoy’s crackling, pan chewing aunt and Raima Sen as a young widowed girl who warms up to Snehamoy for the little concern that he shows towards her.

       There is a gripping kite-flying competition scene in the film where Snehamoy flies Japanese kites sent to him by his wife and competes against the local kite-maker’s team and manages to defeat him. With chants of “Indian kites, zindabad; Japanese kites, murdabad” it makes for a truly splendid watch. Sunderbans and its every  aspect is shown very well, starting from the ebb and flow of the river which cuts it off from the rest of the world, to the cruel thunderstorms and slippery river banks which often don’t allow Miyagi’s precious letters to reach Snehamoy.

       The movie begins to grow on its viewers after a while and from then on it simply stays with them. With an intense sense of sadness in it at a point, the futility of life is felt. But it is also difficult to miss the strong sense of hope lodged securely in it. Some might have a problem with the pace of the movie as it tends to be slow in places but it fits in very well with all the characters of the movie and its basic theme. If you want to watch a film which has its heart at the right place and is not pretentious even for a second, watch The Japanese Wife and feel it tug at your heart-strings.