"When a Woman Sleeps" is directed by Wang Ying and starring Takeshi Kitano and Hidetoshi Nishijima, and was released on February 27, 2016.
The film is based on the short story of the same name by the famous Spanish writer Javier Marias, "While the Woman Are Sleeping". It tells a suspenseful story about the strange love between a young and beautiful woman and a middle-aged and elderly man, the conjugal relationship that has changed its taste, the guilt of voyeurism, and the irrepressible curiosity.
The film's famous writer Kenji Shimizu (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is given a week-long vacation, during which time he takes his wife Aya (Koyuri Koyamada) to live in a hotel in the Japanese tourist resort of Izu.
Shimizu became famous for his debut novel, but since then he has fallen into a downturn, and it has always been difficult to have a commendable classic, and the pillar of confidence in life, his wife, and his own talent has been greatly shaken.
On this rare holiday, Qing Shui, who is worried about the future road, is depressed, and his relationship with his wife is also deadlocked, and they are speechless with each other.
On the first day, a couple who looked quite different from ordinary people aroused Qing Shui's curiosity. At the other end of the sun-drenched pool sits side by side, a middle-aged and unsurprisingly looking Sakihara (Takeshi Kitano) and his youthful, beautiful and sexy lover Miki (Shiori Kuna).
When Shimizu peeks through the straw hat mesh, the pair of partners with a significant age difference are not the externalization of his inner turmoil and fear: his rapidly decaying career and his youthful wife.
Therefore, in both men, there is a deep fear of being betrayed by a female partner who is more energetic than themselves. What is fear? It is the fear of being aware of loss and still having but still wanting to lose between gain and loss.
To dispel this fear, both men are using voyeurism to reduce stress.
From the first sight of them, Shimizu could no longer take his sight off. He speculated about their love affair, their past. Even involuntarily followed the two people, spying on the privacy of each other's rooms. From the gap in the door, he saw Miki lying on the bed and sleeping, and Sasuke had carefully shaved the soft hair on Miki's neck, and then held the camera in his hand to take a picture of the beauty sleeping in front of him. This is also Sawara's voyeuristic behavior towards the girl.
I don't know if all middle-aged and elderly men love to peep at the naked bodies of young girls, but this psychology of Japanese men is not uncommon, especially in the works of literary artists, the purity that has not been contaminated, the mystery that has not been opened by desire, the beautiful, complete, pure and unopened mystery. And once opened, when the woman is no longer asleep, the enthusiasm and talent that desire evolves on its own is enough to eliminate, trample, and erase the self-esteem of men, not so much to dislike the wife but to fear that they cannot satisfy each other, rather than obsessed with the young flesh of the lover, but to escape the weight of aging and unbearable reality.
In a seemingly male-dominated society, men are actually more vulnerable. In the film, when the male protagonist returns to the photo studio, the boss is not without emotion, "It seems that men want a stable life in their hearts, but they still involuntarily follow the women who play men in the palm of their hands, is this the nature of male animals?" Dude, you're a bit like him. ”
"I told her yes, but she betrayed me." "What did you do to her?"
"What is your lady doing, has the hat been found?" "What are you talking about?!"
It's a pair of men spying on each other's lives. Your fear is me, and my fear is also you. I'm spying on you, and you're spying on me.
Love is full devotion, the wax torch turns into gray tears and begins to dry, burning one's own life and melting into the life of the other party, to pursue the soul fit with the partner.
Sawara did everything he could to understand Miki's world, and Kenji and Aya, one writer and one editor, should have been highly compatible in spirit. Such love is enviable, but it is also dangerous, because there can be no more comparison above the highest level. You can't watch your own candle of life burn out like this, and the other person's flame of life burns more and more because it is inserted on the candlestick that is dripping with your wax.
It's just that some processes, once turned on, are difficult to reverse, life is like the red socks that Sawara threw into the pool after hitting the water, even if it is not in the swamp, there is still a helpless despair that the more you struggle, the deeper you fall.
The love of ordinary men, the boundaries of which are so far, even if it has the strange form of Sawara and Miss Miki. Although Kenji had no evidence that he had really had such and such an intersection with the strange lovers, or even that they really existed, when he looked back on the street, he could find that there were souls like Sawara all around him, and he could see them everywhere.
What are men doing while women are sleeping? The film explores what men are doing during the time when women don't have time to care. Thinking of a faltering career? Or are you thinking of another woman on the tip of your heart? Is it to let the sweat stains of hormones with mottled salt frosts tangle with happy or sad pasts? Or gaze with tender affection at the other half who rushed into the sky with him and listen to her sweet breathing?
There are many major decisions made by men in the world that depend on the state in which the woman who sleeps with her is asleep. How many married men can only remove their disguises while women are asleep and face their true selves calmly. Even if you are confused, overwhelmed. Many things that cannot be said can at least be taken a breath in this quiet moment of the night.
You may not know when your significant other is thinking. The reason why he didn't know was because he had some deformed and perverted thoughts that made it difficult for him to talk about. Because normal and peaceful life seems to have been unable to drive people forward, only those strange behaviors and ways of life can stimulate people to bring bright colors to ordinary days.
Is it that more and more civilized life begins to require subtlety and mystery to satisfy the spiritual aesthetics and emotional pleasures of modern people? An increasingly affluent life begins to slowly hollow out the quiet and rational waiting of modern people for life. But this is not the mistake of the evolution of civilization, nor is it the sin of living a rich life, but the confusion of modern people on the unexpected arrival of modern life, but the discomfort of modern people with the evolution of modern life.
Watching Kitano Takeshi act, I always feel that he is the embodiment of another man, yes, it is Takakura Ken, but Uncle Takakura gives people more warmth in his coldness, and Uncle Kitano has more cruel taste.
In the movie "When a Woman Sleeps", some people say that they are ignorant from the beginning to the end, and they do not understand the end.
In fact, you can understand it from the perspective of the pressure and fear that men bring when they face physical aging and career decline, and everything is relieved.
Have you ever been to Africa? Have you seen a lion herd? It is rumored that only one male lion can get all the female lions. So, the Lion King mated with all female lions. But there are also ugly female lions. Those female lions, they let the most undesirable male lions mate with her.
Did you know that variegated male cats are on the verge of extinction? Humans intend to breed them artificially. These male cats only need to eat and drink every day and then mate. So they get stupid. In front of the female cat, or when sleeping, their tongues will stick out, as if they were incompetent. You know, if men do things too simple, they will become fools.