The Love Suicides at Takayama

A budding foreign playwright returns to Japan for one last attempt to free his Japanese artist girlfriend from seclusion in a farming village near the mountain resort of Takayama. To rescue Kimiko, the playwright Daniel Singer enlists a well-known film director and a high-spirited character actress to serve as go-betweens. But the pretext for the gathering at the Miyagawa’s home is no pretext: they are working on a f ilm script about doomed lovers called The Love Suicides at Takayama. The couple have no peace and no privacy until the final scene where they follow the rituals of love suicide to its liberating end. A take-off on the double suicide, domestic tragedy plays of Japan’s most revered playwright, The Love Suicides at Takayama is a screwball, a type of cinema known for its farcical situations and fast-paced dialogue that, in this case, satirizes courtship and social dynamics in Japan.