MovieChat Forums > La femme du Vème (2011) Discussion > Partially based on the film Ugetsu monog...

Partially based on the film Ugetsu monogatari (1953) ?

posted 10 years ago by silver_surfer74
1 reply | jump to latest

i'm just scrawling this out here on a thought, but doesn't it seem that the romance with the dead woman in this film draws heavily from the film Ugetsu monogatari (which itself is based on a japanese story)?

spoiler

in this film towards the end when he goes back to see her, she tells him to forget his family, forget his girlfriend, and stay with her forever..

in the film Ugetsu monogatari, a man meets a noble lady and develops a romance with her, and she also eventually tells him to forget his family and everyone in his old life and to stay with her.. only later he awakes around the rubble of the house he had been staying in with her, only to learn from passers-by that it was a castle that had been burnt down long ago, and the woman had been dead many years- basically he had been under a bewitchment that whole time.

anyway just seemed pretty similar so thought i'd post here to get some thoughts

thanks

[–] lubin-freddy 9 years ago

Perhaps, but there were some major differences/

In Mizoguchi's film, the main character spends a long time, weeks, maybe months, in the palace with the ghost, before he gets spooked, and leaves. In Japanese culture spirits are much more a reality than in Western horror films. He returns home to find his wife, apparently, still alive. She feeds him, cuddles him, and puts him to bed. Only in the morning does he see the ruin his home had become, and understands that his wife is dead.

But her spirit still speaks to him, encouraging him to express himself in the pottery he makes, finding art rather than function. The closing scene has her "talking" to him, as he works, while their son goes to put flowers by her grave.

Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.