A Story Written With Water

A Story Written With Water (1965) was the first in a series of six "anti-melodramas" directed by Japanese New Wave pioneer Yoshishige Yoshia starring his wife Mariko Okada. Okada stars as Shizuka, the mother of a young man, Shizuo (Yasunori Irakawa) tormented by oedipal urges to his attractive and youthful mother despite his recent marriage to his bank bosses equally alluring daughter Yumiko (Ruriko Asaoka). There's another complication to the story as it is revealed that Yumiko's father, Yamazaki (Masakazu Kuwayama) has been having along standing affair with Shizuka. It's a complicated story of love and attraction, but it has the usual Yoshida visual trademarks that impress in the black and white photography-classic framing, shooting from unusual angles and from behind barriers with location shots in the mountains and in a lake at he end. It is is another interesting and well-made film from one of Japan's masters of the New Wave era.