The Affair

Again using the melodrama genre as an instrument of oblique social critique, Yoshida’s ninth feature stars Mariko Okada as a woman trapped in a loveless marriage to a philandering businessman who finds herself mysteriously drawn toward an old lover of her deceased mother’s. She resented her mother’s own infidelities while she was alive but now, caught in an unfulfilling relationship of her own, she begins to see things differently…. A mesmerizing account of a woman’s reconnection with her long-suppressed desires and the resultant tension this causes, The Affair is one of Yoshida and Okada’s most forceful collaborations and ranks among Yoshida’s most visually precise works. Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation.