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*Woman in the Dunes is part of our Who is Luis Buñuel? season, which throughout February explores Buñuel's legacy in modern and contemporary cinema. This legacy section of the season was curated with the help of The Garden Cinema's members.
Entomologist Niki Jumpei (Eiji Okada) misses the last bus home when exploring for insects in a series of sand dunes, and is persuaded by local villagers to spend the night in a house at the bottom of the sandpit. An unnamed young widow (Kyôko Kishida) lives there alone, forced by the villagers to dig the sand that they sell to nearby cities for construction. Enslaved to dig sand alongside the widow, Niki plots his escape even as he adapts to his imprisonment.
Curator's note:
Much like the guests mysteriously trapped after the dinner party in Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel, and the company unable to ever have dinner in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, the two central characters in Woman in the Dunes find themselves unable to leave their home at the bottom of a sand pit.
Teshigahara evokes a similar sense of absurd entrapment and inability to escape one's fate, while offering a charged erotic drama reminiscent of Buñuel's explorations of desire (That Obscure Object of Desire, Belle de Jour).
Cast:
Eiji Okada, Kyōko Kishida, Hiroko Itō