I really love watching (good) movies on a (really) big screen! :)
Supermarket Woman (Japan, 1996)
- Juzo Itami, director and scriptwriter
- Starring: Nobuko Miyamoto, Masahiko Tsugawa
- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's The Complete Juzo Itami Directorial Retrospective program
Juzo Itami's penultimate movie before his premature demise was the fourth film directed and scripted by him that I viewed at the 47th Hong Kong International Film Festival. And with Nobuko Miyamoto and Masahiko Tsuguwa having also appeared in A Taxing Woman's Return, A-Ge-Man -- Tales of the Golden Geisha and The Last Dance, seeing them once again in Supermarket Woman felt like a reunion with by now old friends.
Fittingly, the duo play old friends (from childhood) who have a chance reunion in a supermarket. Now housewife, mother of a university age offspring and a widow, Hanako (Nobuko Miyamoto) was checking out a new supermarket on opening day when she literally bumped into Goro (Masahiko Tsuguwa), who was also checking out the new supermarket that was now his store's rival (to see how it compared to Honest Goro, his place).
To celebrate their reunion, Goro -- who is now a childless widower -- invites Hanako back to his messy bachelor pad for a chat and, he hoped, a bit of nookie. In another movie, Goro's pawing might well have led to date rape and worse. In Supermarket Woman, Goro gets told off for behaving badly but he and Hanako remain friendly. Not only that but she ends up agreeing to go work for him and help to make his supermarket a better place for its shoppers!
How Hanako goes about making Honest Goro a better store is really fun and entertaining to see. Also fun and entertaining to watch is the relationship between her and Goro. Truly, Nobuko Miyamoto and Masahiko Tsuguwa had developed really a great chemistry as well as fun film personae; with her coming across as a really capable dame and him as an amiable goof!
Adding to the sheer enjoyment of viewing Supermarket Woman was this movie coming across as the most good-natured as well as lightest of the Juzo Itami films I viewed at this fest. I mean: sure, there's a villain in the piece. But, at the end of the day, he's a supermarket owner plotting the demise of a rival store by way of such as cheap sales tricks; not, say, a cult leader out to swindle people of their fortunes or a yakuza out to murder people like the bad guys that have featured in others of the filmmaker's movies!
My rating for this film: 9.0
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