Another of Naruse’s early-sixties all-star specials (cf. Daughters, Wives and a Mother), A Woman’s Place is a subtle tragicomedy of multiple emotional centers: widow Takamine Hideko’s relationship with her troubled junior high school-age son; matriarch Sugimura Haruko’s regret over having abandoned her infant son to join a second family; Kusabue Mitsuko, at the outer limit of what is considered prime marriage age, falling in love with a handsome man who may or may not be a scoundrel. The cast performs to perfection. One regrets only that Dan Reiko (as Takamine’s sister) is underused, but she, too, gets the chance to contribute some lively touches to the ensemble. Naruse, together with two of his regular screenwriters, Ide Toshiro and Matsuyama Zenzo, here perfects a kind of film that combines a large number of the tones and incidents that are possible in a drama set in everyday life, without any element determining how the whole piece is to be understood as a comment on that life. The last section, mixing tragedy, humor and Naruse’s characteristic chilliness, is a tour de force. – Chris Fujiwara