Metrograph

Compositing three Fumiko Hayashi short stories, Naruse weaves a cyclical narrative that traces the social web of wily, hard-hearted Kin (Haruko Sugimura), a retired geisha turned moneylender and real estate speculator in shitamachi Tokyo, who makes collection visits to her former, now dependent geisha sisters and encounters two old and tarnished lovers. The thespian Sugimura, a grande dame of the Japanese stage too often confined to colorful character parts on- screen (such as the eldest daughter in Ozu’s Tokyo Story), gives a marvelously inflected performance whose shell of calloused cynicism guards a raw core of wounded feminine vanity. Almost experimental in its reduction of plot to the minutest of interactions, Late Chrysanthemums is a complete Naruse original, offering a fine-grained character study of a resilient woman and her cohort, who confront their obsolete position in postwar Japan.