Floating Clouds

“Short is the life of flowers, infinite their sorrows . . .” Director Mikio Naruse’s most famous film in Japan is a haunting portrait of obsessive love in a ruined world. Set amid the bombed-out landscapes of postwar Japan, FLOATING CLOUDS stars the director’s frequent collaborator, the heartbreaking Hideko Takamine, as a woman who returns from working in French Indochina with hopes of resuming her relationship with a married man (Masayuki Mori) with whom she had an affair—leading them both into a self-destructive spiral of hurt and anger. Drifting dreamily in and out of present reality and memories, it builds with quiet force toward one of Naruse’s most exquisitely devastating finales.