Woman in the Dunes

Japanese thriller is about the catastrophic (and cathartic) collision of two desires.

An entomologist goes into the desert to study a rare beetle and misses the return bus. A young widow who lives near the dune offers him shelter for the night. The wind constantly threatens to bury her refuge with sand, providing the woman with a daily Sisyphean task of clearing it. The hostess accommodates the guest in a hut that is covered in the sand, accessible only by a rope ladder. Upon waking up, the scientist discovers that the ladder is gone.

The film is based on the eponymous novel by a famous Japanese avant-gardist. The plot was carefully preserved, but the director skillfully replaced numerous dialogues with speaking shots of the desert, insects, and human bodies, making the film particularly tangible and palpable. The characters in «Woman in the Dunes» are bound not only by mutual attraction but also by a shared sense of hopelessness. Both the helplessly sitting hero in the pit and the formally free heroine are trapped, unable to escape without each other's help, and perhaps not able to escape at all.