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Japan · 2020
1h 54m
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring Yu Aoi, Issey Takahashi, Masahiro Higashide, Ryota Bando
Genre Drama, War
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On a business trip to Manchuria in 1940, Yusaku, owner of a trading company in Japan, discovers a terrifying national secret. Empowered by a feeling of justice, he is determined to inform the world of what he found. Satoko, his wife, initially vowing to stand by him, soon grows disillusioned with her life.
While this crisp and subdued Hitchcockian melodrama represents yet another unexpected pivot from a filmmaker who’s never liked putting one foot in front of the other (it’s Kurosawa’s first period piece), it’s also just a well-done slab of red meat from someone who hasn’t served up a satisfying meal in so long that it seemed as if he might’ve forgotten how.
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s intriguingly titled Wife of a Spy (Spy no Tsuma) bookends the Second World War in an absorbing, exotic, well-paced thriller with moments of disconcerting realism and horror.
The film is a relatively unfamiliar fit for its prolific helmer, given its sharply evoked period milieu and restrained, classical storytelling. He wears it well: After a slowish start, Wife of a Spy unmasks itself as one of his most purely enjoyable, internationally accessible entertainments.
Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney
A film of sober elegance and control, Wife Of A Spy never quite delivers on the tautness of its build-up, but it is beautifully executed and features a number of teasingly ambivalent performances, notably from lead Yu Aoi.
The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor
The protagonists of Wife of a Spy often act out of character, which all bodes efficiently well for the film’s slippery web of conceit, but ultimately quells a great deal of something the film is otherwise lacking in: feeling. It is, for my money, Kurosawa in low key; an interesting inclusion to a wonderfully idiosyncratic career.
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