Wife of a Spy movie review & film summary (2021)
Set in Kobe sometime in 1941, Satoko’s story ultimately concerns women like her, and how they’re first degraded and then dismissed to background roles in the theater of war. That hardtack narrative doesn’t seem to interest Kurosawa so much as the sensory details that hint at Satoko’s inner conflict: the rattle of windows, the glare of natural light, and the drift of human feet, on their way to parts unknown. The rest of “Wife of a Spy” can’t keep up with Aoi’s restless heroine.
In “Wife of a Spy,” Yusaku mostly exists as the object of Satoko’s quest. He’s always just out of reach, even when he’s talking to or sitting before her. She suspects he’s having an affair, which makes sense given how much dramatic stress Kurosawa puts on a brief scene where Yusaku, after returning from a business trip, embraces Satoko while also staring right at the equally secretive Hiroko (Hyunri). Hiroko soon turns up dead, which reduces her to another piece of Yusaku’s puzzle.
But really, Yusaku is Satoko’s problem to solve, as we see in establishing scenes where she tries to investigate and understand Yusaku. She learns some things about her husband by talking to his nephew Fumio (Ryota Bando), a disillusioned young man who resigns from Yusaku’s import/export company in order to write about his experiences in Manchuria. Manchuria’s mainly important to the plot as a foreign destination (though there’s obviously also some spy stuff going on there): Yusaku likes traveling there because “everything’s cheap,” in his words. So it makes sense that Yusaku “[wants] to see it one more time” before the war escalates further. Fumio, on the other hand, doesn’t care much for Manchuria. "His adventurous spirit got ... fired up" there, according to Yusaku, and there’s obviously a lot more to that story.
Still, Fumio’s baggage is only so important to Satoko’s quest to understand Yusaku. She persists in asking questions, about Yusaku’s activities abroad and his connection to Hiroko, but constantly encounters resistance. That’s the most compelling thing about “Wife of a Spy,” the flickering clarity that illuminates her formerly ingratiating male acquaintances, like Fumio, Yusaku, and even childhood friend Taiji (Masahiro Higashide), the last of whom now serves as a military police chief. Taiji is ultimately reduced to his uniform, as an early conversation with Yusaku suggests. “I’m in uniform, but I dislike arresting people,” Taiji tells Yusaku.
