Friday Night at the Movies!

Movie revue by Joseph Lupoli

Hello fellow film buffs. Tonight's feature is:Woman in the Dunes, directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara 1964

When a school teacher and entomologist (Eiji Okada) leaves Tokyo to collect an unclassified species of beetle in a remote vast desert in Japan, he misses his bus back to civilization. He is persuaded by villagers to spend the night in the home of a young widow. To get there he must climb down a rope ladder into a giant hole in the sand. At the bottom of the hole sits her dilapidated shack. The following morning, he realizes that he is trapped when he discovers the rope ladder is missing and that his shouts for help go unheeded.

What transpires is one of cinema's most hellish and unnerving battle of the sexes, including a nightmarish depiction of the daily struggle to maintain existence by manually removing mass quantities of sand from inside the hole to keep from being crushed by rapid sand erosion. To explain why the villagers pull the buckets of sand up to the surface... and what they do with it would be the spoiler.

Director, Hiroshi teshigahara received an Academy Award nomination for best director.

Netflix this gem at once! This is a uniquely surrealistic film that will hold you captive from beginning to end!