"Fûfu" (Husband and Wife, 1953) premiered three months before another Naruse picture, "Tsuma" (Wife, 1953). Despite both films being by the same director, both films being penned by Ide Toshiro, and both films starring Uehara Ken, Mikuni Rentaro and Nakakita Chieko, the films have no connection with one another. Nor do they have connections with the 20 or so other Naruse films with "Wife" or "Woman" in the title. Naruse's main target demographic was housewives and the studios apparently just decided to market the films with titles that didn't leave you guessing.
"Fûfu" is a middle-of-the-road Naruse film. He had spent the 1940's in relative qualitative slumber, but by 1950's he started to improve his game again. Between films like "Meshi" (Repast, 1951) and "Inazuma" (Lighting, 1952) and "Bangiku" (Late Chrysanthemums, 1954) and "Ukigumo" (Floating Clouds, 1955) "Fûfu" looks like a quickie production between the important ones. Much of Naruse's more mediocre entries suffer from tonal variety. This film starts off as a comedy, but then turns really sour, and is emotionally an uneven package. The film is about a married couple (Uehara Ken & Sugi Yoko), who rent a room for the husband's work chum, the widower played by Mikuni Rentaro. With his new buddies, the man finds new energy to live, and becomes very close with the wife, much to the annoyance of the husband. Very soon this grows into a marital crisis. After all, three's a crowd.
Naruse's directorial touch here, as well as in most of his films, is heavy and serious. He can do comedic works when likes to, as films like "Tsuma yo bara no yô ni" (Wife! Be Like a Rose, 1935) and "Tabi yakusha" (Travelling Actors, 1940) have shown, but he usually chooses to remain somewhat serious-minded. "Fûfu" is a film of which he can't get a proper hold. For a comedy, it's too gloomy, and for a drama, too light-weight. The film tries to re-consider the classic marital roles, as well as the boundaries of friendship, but is in the end poorly structured to do justice for either subject. I found the characters to be uneven and unlikable.
I have seen about 50 Naruse films, and while this is not one of the worst, it does fall behind his standards considerably.
