WOMAN OF THE LAKE (1966)

The surprising thing about this thought-provoking bit of intellectual sleaze from Japanese New Wave director Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida is that it's a literary adaptation, taken from a novel (known in English as The Lake) by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata. That's surprising in retrospect because the story, as reimagined by Yoshida, is so essentially cinematic. Here's the difference: the Kawabata novel, I've learned, is about a guy who steals a woman's purse and finds a bunch of money inside. His theft of the money is compromising to the woman, Miyako, because it was her earnings as the kept woman of an old lecher. In the movie, the compromising item the thief finds in the purse is film.

In Yoshida's version of the story, Miyako is married to a dull older man but having an affair with a younger man, Kitano, who is also a bit of a stiff. Nothing seems to hold Miyako and Kitano together but their regular trysts in a hotel room, and you can see that Miyako's starting to get bored with him. His odd manner of addressing her as "Ma'am" or "Lady" has got to be off-putting. Sensing that the end is near himself, Kitano wants something to remember her by: nude pictures. Miyako consents reluctantly, realizing that photos could get her in trouble down the line. Kitano gets the pictures developed but doesn't have prints made. Seeing this, Miyako puts the film in her own purse, which is how the thief gets it after accosting her at night. He seems to have blackmail in mind at first, but he grows obsessed with Miyako, telling her that he's fallen in love with the woman in the photos. She responds to his interest as Kitano becomes more defensive and belligerent. She still wants the photos back, however, even though destroying those links to her could be a metaphorical murder of the new man in her life....

Woman of the Lake lets us see Mariko Okada from multiple angles.

Yoshida has transformed a literary episode into a story designed for cinema. His larger subject is the way we idealize, eroticize and objectify people through images. He illustrates his theme with a confrontation between Kitano and the would-be blackmailer at a grungy camera club, one of those places where shutterbugs snap shots of nude models, and with an extended visit to the making of some sort of sex film on a beach. Yoshida also tries to demonstrate his premise with a self-consciously fragmentary presentation of Miyako, played by his wife and frequent leading lady, Mariko Okada. As Miyako goes out at night, the director repeatedly cuts back and forth between front and rear views of the actress. Lit from behind, her face becomes a dark void in the close-ups. He sometimes seems as interested in showing us the back of Okada's neck as in showing her pretty face.

At the camera club (above) possession of the anonymous model isn't an issue. It's a different story (below) when the possession of pictures can mean possession of Miyako herself.

With a theme like this, Woman of the Lake is purposefully problematic. Can anyone capture Miyako's essence on film, or do they project their desires on the image? Do they then project the image back on the real woman? For that matter, Yoshida practically begs us to ask, can cinema or any visual medium capture a person's true self or lay down a true reading of even a fictional character? There's an alienating pretentiousness to the whole project, but since it's meant to be that way I still have to respect the director's ambition. As far as I can tell, it's a film that's meant to make you ask questions as much as it is an invitation to empathize with the main characters or leer at nearly naked women. I think it can be enjoyed as a mildly erotic, mildly noirish small-scale thriller, but it may be more likely to stimulate the mind than anything else.