Kumeko Urabe has four daughters and one son, each by a different father. The son is a layabout who keeps saying "Next year...." The daughters are hardworking, and the three eldest are married. The youngest is Hideko Takamine. She has a job as a conductress on a tour bus. Her family keeps trying to get her to marry Eitarô Ozawa. She looks at her sisters and their unhappy marriages, the squabbling, the drunken men. She does not want to get married. She wants out. One day, it strikes her like a lightning bolt that she can leave, and she vanishes from her family.
Mikio Naruse directs this movie from a novel by Fumiko Hayashi and it's a real shocker to anyone who looks at the gentle family comedies of Ozu, where loving and successful parents nudge their loving children towards the right outcome. What happens when nothing works? What do you do when you do everything right -- well, most things -- and everyone around you fouls up? You work hard, you live thriftily, you keep your mouth shut because no one listens -- like Miss Takamine in this movie, I am a youngest child, and that's the way it is -- and watch as others act like idiots, as if there are no consequences, and then listen to them chatter drunkenly about their bad luck.... and ask you to pick up the bar bill. Like a dope, you do.
There's no disputing Naruse's abilities as a film maker, and no disputing Miss Takamine's as an actress. The two of them could turn out a very good movie whenever they worked together. Every once in a while, they hit the right subject, and this movie speaks to me like a thunderclap.
