A spirited, magically inventive and charming film full of large dashes of French New Wave quirkiness, and winner of 1990’s Pia Film Festival grand prize, The Rain Women set the stage for Shinobu Yaguchi ’s later career in offbeat comedies such as Waterboys and Swing Girls. In the first part of the film, two young women live together and create their own eccentric adventures, transforming their (always rainy) everyday environment into an enchanted playground, full of pop-musical sequences and synchronized tooth brushing performances. As the second half of the film shifts to both deeper psychological themes and a more meta-filmic playfulness, Yaguchi develops a bewitchingly melancholic atmosphere of unpredictability. Often compared to Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating, the film is a fascinating example of the exploration of the lines between filmic reality and filmic fiction—a signature jishu film obsession.