The Insect Woman
1966, NR, 123 min.
Directed by Shohei Imamura, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Sachiko Hidari, Jitsuko Yoshimura.

The Insect Woman, from Japanese director Shohei Imamura, one of the most important – and least internationally known – post-war filmmakers, tells the story of a young peasant woman who leaves her mountain village to become the boss of a call girl ring in Tokyo. With this celebration of three generations of female survivors, the director’s sensitivity toward woman has been widely praised. The Village Voice named it the best of the year when it was released in New York in the Eighties. It has also been compared to Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun and Sirk’s Imitation of Life.

This article appears in November 12 • 1999.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.