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Ukigumo

Ukigumo

1955
Romance, Drama
2h 3m
Hard luck Yukiko (Takamine Hideko) remembers the days of wine and romance back in Indochina but Kengo (Mori Masayuki) isn't having any of it. The war is over, the survivors are back in Japan and Yukiko wants to rekindle the old flame. (IMDB Comments)
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Ukigumo

1955
Romance, Drama
2h 3m
Your probable score
Avg Percentile 71.48% from 200 total ratings

Ratings & Reviews

(200)
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Rated 15 Apr 2009
84
77th
Interesting tale of dysfunctional love that uses its setting to make some small but pointed comments about life in postwar Japan. It never really achieved the greatness I expected, and which the first half hour gave glimpses of, but it's still a rather flawless film and Naruse's willingness to be a cynical romantic appeals to me.
Rated 17 May 2012
76
94th
Hideko Takamine's performance emphasizes her protagonist's paradoxical strength. No passive victim, she chooses her fate, driving the story along by her agency. Perhaps a woman' agency in a repressive patriarchal society can only express itself in a radically destructive form."I got what I wanted," she says. She does, making Ukigumo a statement on the most terrifying and radical form of human freedom.
Rated 28 Apr 2008
83
77th
Naruse's films are always well-made, but in my opinion they don't do much to distinguish themselves, especially compared to similar work by Mizoguchi and Ozu. Their main characteristic seems to be an air of cynicism. This one seems to be his most highly-regarded, but to me it was neither much better nor much worse than any other I'd seen. The jumps in time were the most interesting aspect. Like I said, it's well-made, and I liked it, I just didn't think it was especially noteworthy.
Rated 10 Jul 2011
50
23rd
At first this was an interesting drama with a clever use of jumps forward in time. After a short while however it started getting repetitive very fast; instead of showing the closeness of the main lovers, the characters' inability to leave each other started to become a contrivance to drag out the melodrama, to the point I did not care about them by the end.
Rated 10 Jun 2017
100
68th
The best film of the "classic" Japanese 1950s studio period, in my opinion. A moving, beautifully shot, clever love story. With great characters.
Rated 01 Mar 2008
88
80th
# 242
Rated 09 Apr 2023
7
94th
so fucking acidic and despairing, man. a film about a couple who can't stop hurting each other, but because they belong nowhere else (in post-war japan all the 'homes' have too many ghosts) they keep ending up back in one another's toxic orbit, trying to resuscitate something once special that's long been poisoned and drained of life. no wonder it reportedly fucked ozu up for months.
Rated 30 Nov 2011
86
72nd
#272
Rated 19 Dec 2008
87
74th
259
Rated 06 Nov 2013
7
73rd
The narrative moves forwards and backwards in time, but quickly reveals a tragic story of unrequited love. The interest lies in its setting against a background of change in Japan.
Rated 13 Jan 2010
86
72nd
271
Rated 17 Apr 2019
79
77th
My PSI for this is nuts. It's basically saying this ought to be my favorite film of all time. I don't expect it to be, though it was a very faithful (except everyone being far too attractive) and well realized adaptation of the book. Odd that they mostly cut Kano out of the story, since he was the one topic they always returned to in the book and his fate set things in motion, but for a low-impact 2-hour film, it has no wasted motion. Hideko really inhabits Yukiko scarily well.
Rated 20 Sep 2020
3
36th
Isn't it wonderful when you can make the world as small as you want.
Rated 13 Jun 2022
3
72nd
the story continues as a dull drame but that ending.... it is a punch in the gut.
Rated 12 Nov 2022
81
77th
A very good tragedy about a doomed, incompatible pair of people who had a romance in wartime and their story in the years after. Some interesting transitions for the time period and it even felt a bit risque at times for a 1955 film out of Japan.

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