A quietly devastating Japanese melodrama about two working women, selflessly devoting themselves to family, whatever the cost.

Less well-known than his contemporaries Ozu and Kurosawa, Mikio Naruse’s sensitive and restrained filmmaking offers profound and plentiful rewards. The story follows an aging geisha, Kikue, and a younger woman, Terugiku, trying to keep Kikue’s son from turning to crime. At first ashamed of his mother, the boy gradually comes to recognise the compassion, dignity, and quiet strength of the two women. The film’s carefully observed portrait of ordinary lives, weighted by social pressures and economic hardships, shines with humanism, and trusts the audience to read the nuance of each character’s inner world. An intimate, understated masterpiece.

Dir. Mikio Naruse | Japan | 1933 N/C 12A | b&w | Japanese intertitles with English surtitles | 1h 12m

With: Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Akio Ison

Original title: Kimi to Wakarete

Performing live: John Sweeney (piano)

Online programme notes: Dr Kelly Robinson

Screening material courtesy of Janus Films/The Criterion Collection and Shochiku Co. Ltd