Impasse
A.K.A. Flame and Women and Flame of Feeling

1967, 101 min., 35 mm, B&W, in Japanese with live English subtitles. Directed by Kiju Yoshida. With Mariko Okada, Isao Kimura, Mayumi Ogawa. Print courtesy of Shochiku Co., Ltd.

As the title implies, Mariko Okada and Kiju Yoshida’s fifth collaboration is a moral furnace of a film, stoked with guilt and vengefulness. A labyrinthine exploration of the decomposition of a middle-class couple, the bewitching, fractured narrative artfully shuffles the time scheme, as the protagonist, Ritsuko (Okada, in a highly nuanced and restrained performance), stumbles out of the sluggish half-life of her sterile marriage and towards a troubled search to restore her emotional self. After giving birth to a son through artificial insemination (presented here as science fiction), she starts nourishing a forbidden but irrepressible desire for the biological father of her child.

Part of the Globus Film Series:
Mad, Bad…. & Dangerous to Know: Three Untamed Beauties

Tickets
$11/$7 members, students & seniors

Buy Tickets Online or please call the Japan Society Box Office at (212) 715-1258, Mon. – Fri. 11 am – 6 pm, Weekends 11 am – 5 pm.