Dunes Around the Woman

There's a stereotype based on the idea that foreign films are "arty" and "pretentious" and that this is a good reason not to like them. It's not true, of course; foreign films span almost all the genres that Hollywood films do with the possible exception of the summer blockbuster. But there are foreign films that certainly give rise to this belief. A good example would be Woman in the Dunes.

Eiji Okada plays Niki, a schooteacher and amateur entomologist who goes to some isolated seaside place looking for a specific rare type of sand bug. He traipses across the dunes, but he finds that he spends too long there, as he misses the last bus back to civilization. (You'd think he would have brought a map with him.) He's in luck, however, in that he meets some villagers who are willing to put him up for the night with one of their number. The only thing is, she lives at the bottom of a cliff, and access down is by ladder.

In the morning Niki finds that he's not at the bottom of a cliff, but at the bottom of a sand pit. (How and why a house wound up there is a good question that as far as I can tell wasn't answered.) Living in the house is an unnamed woman (Kyoko Kishida) who tells Niki that she has to keep moving the sand all the time because otherwise it would swallow up her house. In fact, the unceasing sand dunes swallowed her husband and child. (If she ever even had a husband or child.) As to why she doesn't just abandon the house, she claims that if they let the dunes swallow her house, the dunes would eventually swallow the rest of the village, too. Move to higher ground already.

The woman can't move to higher ground anyhow because the other villagers won't let her. They've removed the ladder overnight, and a harness-type system like you see dropped from helicopters to give the woman provisions. Niki finds himself a prisoner and slave at the bottom of the sand pit, constantly moving sand even though he doesn't want to. In fact, he has the sensible idea of wanting to escape. But the villagers are insistent that the woman needs a man.

It goes on like this for nearly two and a half hours. It's tedious, pointless, and full of characters with bizarre motivations that make no sense. And lots and lots of sand. I don't just mean the fact that the house is constantly under threat of being sanded under; I mean languorous shots of sand moving slowly. And if that's enough there's more sand for you.

Amazingly, the IMDb reviewers praise this one to high heaven, for reasons that frankly baffle me. Criterion released this one on DVD and Blu-ray, so if you want to judge for yourself, you can always get it on DVD or Blu-ray, or just wait for the next time TCM shows it in Silent Sunday Nights now that they have the contract with Criterion.