Suna no onna / Woman in the Dunes (1964) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection
on September 15th, 2016 at 19:39
Japanese schoolteacher and entomologist Niki Junpei (Eiji Okada, Lady Snowblood) wanders into the desert to examine the sand dunes and collect insects. He pauses to take a nap, loses track of time and misses the last bus home. A local man offers to give Junpei shelter, and leads him to the home of a woman (Kyoko Kishida, The Human Condition) whose home is located in the middle of a large sand quarry. Junpei spends the evening talking to the woman, and learns that she is a widow: her husband and child were killed by a sandstorm. She spends her days digging sand: partially because the village sells it to be used in concrete, and partially to prevent her home from being buried.
The next morning, Junpei discovers that he’s walked into a trap: the rope ladder he used to descend into the quarry has been removed by the villagers, and climbing out proves a futile endeavor. He interrogates the woman, who has no real answers for him. At first he tries to escape, but the walls of sand only crumble beneath him. As the man realizes the extent of his enslavement, the relationship between the two becomes both bitterly antagonistic and erotically dependent. Resigned to displacing sand that will only be redeposited the following morning, the man struggles to find some meaning in his torturous existence...
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