Word: itami
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...TAXING WOMAN. An immovable object in the shape of a greedy, tax-resisting real estate magnate meets the irresistible force of a zealous lady tax collector. Japan's Juzo Itami (Tampopo) collects our interest and offers sly dividends...
...TAXING WOMAN. An immovable object in the shape of a greedy, tax-resisting real estate magnate meets the irresistible force of a zealous lady tax collector. Japan's Juzo Itami (Tampopo) collects our interest and offers sly dividends...
Except by Juzo Itami, a filmmaker to whom obsession is character, the source of everything that is interesting and wacko in human behavior. In last year's Tampopo he genially satirized the spiritual contortions people will undergo when gripped by a fervor for haute cuisine. In A Taxing Woman his subjects are relentless greed and implacable righteousness, and his mood is, appropriately, much darker...
...learned more than you needed to know about the creation of the perfect noodle soup in Tampopo, you may now feel you are finding out more than you require about tax law and outlawry in contemporary Japan. But arcana have their own peculiar charms -- and their special usefulness in Itami's larger design. When his single-minded characters are thwarted in the pursuit of their hearts' odd desires, they have a tendency to burst into sudden, angry flame. And to elicit hysterical responses from bystanders astounded when a quiet oddball turns into a bright-burning fireball...
With this film, Itami is less a knockabout ironist, more a sly cinematic Dostoyevsky. The clues to this secret identity lie in his sudden alternations of mood between quiet and noisy desperation, his fascination with the moral force of the holy fool -- the part the director's graceful wife Miyamoto is essentially playing -- and, above all, his allusions to Crime and Punishment. As in the great novel, it is a tenacious detective's patience that forces the final confession a criminal requires for his soul's peace. But the entertaining dexterity with which Itami plays this potentially heavy hand...