Elegant Beast

WORLD PREMIERE | 4K RESTORATION

Saturday, December 2, 4:30 PM
Sunday, December 3, 6:45 PM

This brilliant satirical comedy about self-interest and postwar recovery penned by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba) centers on the cutthroat Maeda family, who manage to lie, cheat and steal their way out of poverty in order to maintain a comfortable bourgeois life in a Tokyo apartment. The only person that can out-manipulate them is Tokie (Wakao), a clever entertainment agency accountant who plays the men in love with her to her own advantage. Set almost entirely within the Maeda apartment, Kawashima mines every possible camera angle and utilizes ingenious blocking for maximum dramatic and comic effect.

“Combining an immaculate, compartmentalized mise en scène with some of the most ambivalent and acid characterizations of human behaviour, Elegant Beast is a knock-it-out-of-the-park winner that ought to prompt a Kawashima retrospective were anybody in fact paying attention.” – Slant Magazine

1962, 96 min., DCP, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Yuzo Kawashima. With Ayako Wakao, Eiji Funakoshi, Yuko Hamada, Eiro Takamatsu.

Part of Yuzo Kawashima x Ayako Wakao

Tickets: $13/$10 seniors & students/$9 Japan Society members
SPECIAL OFFER: Purchase all three Yuzo Kawashima x Ayako Wakao films in the same transaction and receive $2 off each ticket!

Box Office Policy