The Affair

Plot

Oriko and her mother had a difficult relationship. She knew of her mother's relationships with men, and insisted she stop, interfering in the affair. Now that her mother died in a mysterious accident, she attempts to find out more about her from her lovers. She herself is in an unhappy marriage; one without love. She wishes to divorce her husband, a prosperous, unfaithful man but he refuses. Through this dilemma she begins to understand her mother more and more, and that they are more alike than she thinks. After a long time, she attends another poetry meeting in the house of Mitsuhuru, a sculptor who had a relationship with her mother five years earlier, against which she had serious objections. And now she begins some affairs including him. Then she gets thrown into a romantic dilemma after succumbing to a rough laborer. At another time, she, always wearing traditional kimonos, witnesses the rape of her more frivolous sister-in-law.

Why watch

Oriko grapples with the aftermath of her mother's mysterious death, seeking to understand the woman who shaped her life through the lens of her mother's lovers. As she navigates her own unfulfilling marriage, the film immerses viewers in a world of emotional complexity and familial entanglements. Watching it feels like peeling back layers of a delicate onion, revealing the bittersweet truths of love, loss, and the haunting echoes of the past.

Talking points

• the impact of parental relationships on identity
• the role of tradition in modern life
• the complexities of love and infidelity
• the portrayal of women in Japanese cinema

Cultural context

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