A period drama set in the 1950s about a couple isolating themselves from the outside world as they attempt to salvage their faltering marriage, no matter what the costs, after the husband has an affair.
“The Sting of Death” opens with a woman crouched in a corner, taking tepid questions from a man offscreen. The woman turns out to be a wife dealing with her husband’s infidelity in the 1950s postwar period in Japan. Ittoku Kishibe plays Toshio, a hack writer trying to salvage his marriage but willing to go just so far to do so. Keiko Matsuzaka plays Miho, Toshio’s wife, who can’t get past the indiscretion. Miho exhibits erratic behavior and extreme mood swings – alternately apologetic and angry.
Midori Kiuchi, as Kuniko, is Toshio’s affair partner. When Toshio tells Kuniko he can’t see her again, she asks for an explanation, which he cannot provide. She then proposes that he see her at least once a month, or failing that, to write periodically – neither of which he can agree to do.
In one of the many scenes where Miho maliciously prods Toshio, she asks if he gave Kuniko many gifts. He replies that there was never anything special. Miho accuses Toshio of lying yet again, her go-to response in nearly every case. He admits to giving Kuniko some chocolates but nothing else. Obsessed as she is with Toshio’s ostensible failure to remember, Miho hires investigators. She learns of a gift of a dozen multi-colored panties and then complains that Toshio never gave her anything like that.
With her children’s grandparents, Miho is all sweetness and light, even as she imposes petty indignities on Toshio – a burden he can be sure will never end. The humiliation extends to the public sphere, where shopkeepers are surprised that the husband carries the groceries. Toshio stands impotently in the background, like a doormat or an admonished dog. On the way home, Miho abruptly announces that she is tired of walking with Toshio, then concedes coyly, letting him tag along anyway.
As the narrative goes on, Miho strains to dig ever deeper into Toshio’s affair with Kuniko. She wants to know if Toshio pleased Kuniko sexually. Once again, she accuses Toshio of lying, a tiresome and repetitive display. Unfazed and oblivious, Miho presses ahead anyway. Embarrassing scenes in public do not deter Miho – indeed, she appears to take pride in her vengeful pokes and nags that often leave Toshio screaming in tears. When he withdraws emotionally as a defense mechanism, she perks up in front of the children like a giddy schoolgirl. At the end of the day, Toshio becomes a prisoner of Miho’s domination – a pathetic and subservient creature with no hope for escape or redemption.
Miho’s insecurities constantly bubble up to the surface – in one instance, claiming never to have been loved. Toshio never knows what will happen next. At a kite flying event with the children, Miho huddles down silently as Toshio looks on awkwardly. In a train station, Miho goes apoplectic at the sight of Kuniko across the tracks. Later in their home, when Toshio tries to hang himself in desperation, Miho intervenes stubbornly. It becomes clear that without her husband, Miho is nothing. Oddly – at least from a male’s perspective – for a woman who so frantically wants to keep her husband, Miho’s behavior only serves to drive him away. If Miho is, in fact, going mad, she clearly wants to bring Toshio along for the ride as well.
Directed and adapted to the screen by Kohei Oguri based on the novel by Toshio Shimao, the motion picture won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival for 1990 releases. “The Sting of Death” is a metaphor for betrayal and its aftermath – grim places from which return may not be possible. The film is a tortured look at how some marriages do not quietly succumb to divorce or separation but rather trudge on ad infinitum, like a suspended sentence of death. The tragedy is that, in some ways, death might seem preferable.
When Miho admits that she does not know why she is torturing Toshio and that she doesn’t hate him, they relent to therapy. During the session, she attacks Toshio. The doctors warn that no woman has the right to strike her husband, sending the situation into a turn for the worse. Toshio comments cryptically that his wife hates electric shock treatments – suggesting that their issues trace the origins back long before the affair.
Miho can never be satisfied. She begs, cajoles, reprimands, and screams in roughly equal measure. Upon release from the hospital, nothing has changed. The ups, downs, highs, and lows – all with dysfunctional fury and vigor – continue to permeate their ongoing existence. No matter how servile Toshio offers to be, Miho falls back into her well of disillusionment and contempt.
“The Sting of Death” lays bare the dark recesses within the mind of a wife who has declared war on her husband for a transgression she can never truly forgive. Ten years into her marriage, she is coming apart at the seams, almost literally. At one point, Toshio tells Miho that she has won, but in this vignette, there are no winners – only two lost people whose souls are dying.
In Japanese with English subtitles, this release marks the first time the film has been available on Blu-ray.
Now available on a Limited Edition Blu-ray™ from Radiance Films
