Nemureru bijo
The House of the Sleeping Virgins
- Release Date
- January, 31st, 1968
- Running Time
- 95 min
- Genre
- Feature
- Color
- -
- Screening Format
- -
[ Directed by ]
[ Cast ]
[ Staff ]
- KAWABATA Yasunari ── Original Story
- SHINDO Kaneto ── Screenplay
- SATO Masamichi ── Cinematography
[ Production Company ]
SHOCHIKU
[ Distributor (Japan) ]
SHOCHIKU
[ Story ]
A very old novelist, Eguchi, is introduced by two equally elderly friends to a curious establishment in Kamakura. It is like a brothel but the girls are all young, drugged, sound asleep, and the customers are too old to do any more than touch them and feast their eyes.
Eguchi is soon a steady customer. It is a way to recapture the feelings of his youth and, in particular, to remember the more vividly an unfortunate love affair he had when he was a student when the girl's father refused permission for them to marry and she killed herself.
At home, Eguchi's grown daughter, Yoshiko, is having emotional problems of her own, not being able to choose between Higuchi and Yoshida, both of whom have proposed to her.
One day Higuchi rapes her. She at once decides to marry Yoshida who accepts her as she is, saying that this misfortune means nothing to the happiness of having her as his wife.
About the same time two of Eguchi's old friends die, both while they are in the house of assignation. Feeling his own death upon him, Eguchi kisses and caresses the drugged girl, trying to hold on to his memories.
The day of Yoshiko's wedding approaches. Eguchi chides Higuchi for only raping his daughter. He should, he says, have captured her entirely. Perhaps the old novelist is thinking of his own thwarted love affair. At any rate, he must now look forward to the end of life, lonely, childless, and friendless.
【Quoted from Unijapan Film Quarterly 1968 11.2】
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