DVD
Woman in the dunes = Suna no onna
Call Number
- DVD FOREIGN (CEN)
Edition
Two-DVD special edition.
Languages
In Japanese, with English subtitles.
Performers
Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida.
Publication Information
[Irvington, NY] : Criterion Collection, [2016]
Physical Description
2 videodiscs (147 minutes) : sound, black and white ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 booklet (27 pages : illustrations ; 19 cm.)
Audience
Not rated.
Summary
An amateur entomologist is left in Tokyo to study an unclassified species of beetle found in a vast desert. When he misses his bus back to civilization, he is persuaded to spend the night with a young widow in her hut at the bottom of a sand dune. What results is one of cinema's most unnerving and palpably erotic battles of the sexes, as well as a nightmarish depiction of everyday life as a Sisyphean struggle.
Notes
Title from container.
Story from the novel by Kôbô Abe.
Originally released as a motion picture in 1964.
Special features: High-definition digital restoration ; video essay on the film from 2007 by film scholar James Quandt ; four short films from director Hiroshi Teshigahara's early career: Hokusai (1953), Ikebana (1956), Tokyo 1958 (1958), and Ako (1965) ; Teshigahara and Abe, a 2007 documentary examining the collaboration between Teshigahara and novelist Kobo Abe, featuring interviews with film scholars Donald Richie and Tadao Sato, film programmer Richard Peña, set designer Arata Isozaki, producer Noriko Nomura, and screenwriter John Nathan ; trailer.