A Story Written With Water

A boy who has lost his father, lives with his mother. She has managed to raise him with the assistance of an important man in town for whom the son works. The boy, however, does not know that the mother and his boss are having an affair. The boy marries the boss’s daughter, but the marriage fails. He goes back to living with his mother, but the family environment comes apart when he learns of her affair. Yoshida deals with the theme incest using concepts of existencialism and psychoanalysis, all of which has led the critics to regard him as the most intellectual of the Japanese ‘nouvelle vague’ film makers. Researcher David Desser saw "a symbolic relationship between the social and the sexual elements in Japanese post-war films", associating the success of the plan for economic recovery drawn up by the U.S. with liberating the customs in the country.

Born in 1933, in Fukui, Japan. He studied French Literature and, in 1955, joined Shochiku producers as Assistant Director to Keisuke Kinoshita. He directed his first film in 1960 with Good-for-Nothing. He was first noticed by the critics in 1962, with An Affair at Akitsu, A Story Written with Water (1965), The Affair (1967), Eros + Massacre (1969) and Heroic Purgatory (1970), dealing with political and sexual themes. Yoshida always refused interference with his work and, after he filmed Coup D’Etat (1973), he made documentaries for TV and for the cinema. He went back to fiction in 1986, with A Promise, followed by Wuthering Heights (1988), an adaptation of the novel by the same name by Emily Brontë. Women at the Mirror (2002), his last film, is programmed for the 27th Mostra.

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA