Issue:
May 2023
Join the Film Committee
Join us on Tuesday, May 9 at 6 p.m. for a sneak preview of Naoko Ogigami’s new masterwork, Ripples, a film that will likely redefine her career. The award-winning director has long been Japan’s leading female filmmaker, widely hailed for her delicate, heartwarming stories that touch on a range of urgent social issues with reassuring calm and wonderfully quirky humor. But times have changed — or perhaps not changed enough — and Ogigami is clearly fed up with the sorry state of being a woman in Japan. Ripples tackles the country’s male-dominated society, the silent pressure for women to be good wives and mothers, the expanding power of new religions, discrimination against people with disabilities and more, with ample black humor and a towering central performance by the inestimable Mariko Tsutsui (Harmonium and A Girl Missing) as a woman whose estranged husband (Ken Mitsuishi) suddenly returns and demands she care for him as he dies of cancer. His presence is like a rock that makes ripples on the quiet surface of her life. To her surprise (and the encouragement of a new friend at work), she becomes consumed with dark thoughts of revenge, and finally allows her emotions to get the better of her. The writer-director will be on hand for a Q&A session after the screening. (Japan, 2023, 120 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles).
Karen Severns is chair of the FCCJ film committee