Meshi

Repast is a 1951 film by Mikio Naruse, starring Setsuko Hara. It is set in postwar Osaka and it is about a woman who has moved from Tokyo to settle down with her husband. Her salaryman husband ignores her. She is slowly being worn down by domestic drudgery. Matters come to a head when her pretty niece comes to stay and the husband begins to flirt with her. "Naruse shows brilliantly how the husband and wife cling to respectability by a thread." Dissatisfied with his efforts to improve their household life, she returns to Tokyo for a time. Repast is the first of Naruse's adaptations from the novels by Fumiko Hayashi, a writer who specialised in stories of the downtrodden. "I am moved by the sadness to be found in the simple lives of people...", a quotation included at the beginning of the film, expresses the writer's preoccupations.