The Insect Woman

The film follows Tome's life from the war to the beginning of the 60s'. Grown up in the north to a family of poor farmers, Tome has always been put upon in working and sexually abused. Nobuko, her daughter, is born from a one-night stand. Following a failed marriage, Tome moves to a city and finds her own independence working first as a worker and maid and after as a prostitute and a "brothel-madame". Imamura's film tells without reticences a personal story and turns it into a collective metaphor. Magnificent are the Scope photographs, shot with unusual objectives like 210 mm and 700 mm.