When Women Lie / 嘘 / Uso (‘Lies’, 1963)

Obscure Japanese Film #160

L-R: Eiko Takashiro, Junko Kano, Nobuko Otowa

Following the template of their earlier picture A Woman’s Testament (1960), this omnibus comedy from Daiei studios is essentially three separate half-hour films by different directors cobbled together with no linking story, only a loose theme to unite them. 

 

Takashi Nakamura and Eiko Takashiro

Episode 1, ‘Playgirl’, written by Yoshio Shirasaka and directed by Yasuzo Masumura:

Mariko (Eiko Takashiro) is a young woman dating four different men but carefully preserving her virginity as she works out which is the best candidate for marriage. She keeps detailed notes on each one and even adopts a different persona depending on the tastes of the man she is meeting next. However, her cool calculations are upset when she discovers that she has a rival (Kyoko Enami) for her current favourite (Jerry Fujio)… 

Junko Kano

 

Episode 2, ‘Mistress on the Books’, written by Ryozo Kasahara and directed by Kozaburo Yoshimura:

Shinko (Junko Kano) is a soap opera actress dismayed to learn that her character has suddenly been killed off because she’s considered a ‘daikon’ (white radish, meaning ‘bad actor’). She complains to the show’s sponsor, who is also the head of a pharmaceutical company and her sugar daddy, but she’s been milking him for too much money, so he’s considering cutting her loose and sends one of his minions (Keizo Kawasaki) to deal with the situation…

Nobuko Otowa

 

Episode 3, ‘Three Women’, written by Kaneto Shindo and directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa

A woman enters an apartment and shoots a man dead. When she is questioned by a police officer (Ken Utsui), it emerges that the woman, Michiyo (Nobuko Otowa), had left her live-in job at an inn to come and live in the apartment with a salesman, Tashiro (Eiji Funakoshi), and that she had shot him when he wanted to break it off. We also learn that Tashiro had a wife (Mitsuko Mori) who forced him to stop seeing Michiyo. But where did Michiyo get the gun?   

Eiji Funakoshi

 

The English title of this picture seems almost unfair as the men here do quite a bit of lying themselves! In fact, the unifying theme might more accurately be described as infidelity rather than lying, but in any case the tone is one of comic irony with a dash of cynicism. With its moody lighting and camera angles, Kinugasa’s episode briefly threatens to become more serious, but not for long. 

Mitsuko Mori

 

What the picture may lack in depth, it makes up for in entertainment value, and I would certainly recommend it to fans of Daiei movies of this era. The three female stars all acquit themselves well, but Junko Kano in particular gets one of her best roles and proves a dab hand at comedy. She never quite reached the heights of Daiei’s top female stars Machiko Kyo, Ayako Wakao and Fujiko Yamamoto, perhaps partly because she started later (1957) and retired at the height of her popularity in 1963 due to an eye issue which was exacerbated by working under the bright studio lights. At the time of writing, she’s still alive at 88. 

 DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)