FLOATING CLOUDS (1955)
In post-WWII Japan, a lonely woman tries to find purpose and stability in a devastated Tokyo.

In post-WWII Japan, a lonely woman tries to find purpose and stability in a devastated Tokyo.
There’s a pervasive sense of loss permeating Mikio Naruse’s Floating Clouds / 浮雲, which is pronounced enough to extend beyond its central narrative. Later on in this story, when one can clearly see its two main characters’ dejection, their aimless wanderings as they talk amongst one another, and the economic hardship around them, it becomes clear that this is a wider examination of Japan’s crushed spirit and dire circumstances after World War II. This isn’t a nation in crisis, necessarily, but one that has been plunged headfirst into grief, paralleled with this story’s tortured love affair. Both storytelling avenues are informed by tearful, bitter reflections on the past and who these protagonists could have been if they’d only changed the course of their lives.
In some respects, it’s easy to see why Naruse’s 1955 drama has earned such high acclaim in its home country, having placed third in a 1999 list from over 140 Japanese film critics for the best Japanese movie of all time. (It was also heavily admired by two of its country’s most celebrated filmmakers, Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu.) From the outset, Floating Clouds does well to convey that which it cannot directly articulate, with Japan’s post-war conditions rounding out the background of many scenes or informing some of the film’s plot beats and character dynamics.
At first, the movie continually flits back and forth between two very different periods in Yukiko Koda (Hideko Takamine) and Kengo Tomioka’s (Masayuki Mori) lives, split into distinct parts by the end of the war. The pair meet in French Indochina, where the young and impressionable Yukiko falls hard for the married Kengo, with the two embarking on a love affair. When they meet each other again years later in Japan, seamless editing choices marking out these two timelines cast a painful light on what will befall their encounters. Tragedy and abject pain are hinted at beautifully in Floating Clouds’ opening few minutes, leaving little room for hope in this tortured tale of love and regret.
But while its visuals and subtext are worth admiring, the film’s primary drama falls to the wayside as it spends the rest of its two-hour runtime continually prodding its main character into insisting on her tragic circumstances. Yukiko has made a grave error in falling for the callous and uncaring Kengo, where the pair couldn’t be more different in their appreciation (or lack thereof) of one another. This protagonist hopelessly pines for her unrequited lover throughout the film, all while he continually rejects her. The pair’s meandering conversations reveal little about their inner desires, motivations, or general characteristics beyond what is easily conveyed in the movie’s first few minutes.
Only the brief moments of connection in the early part of Floating Clouds’ chronology hint at believable romantic feelings between them, while the rest of the film leaves viewers in a constant state of exasperation over Yukiko’s desperation. Kengo isn’t funny, or charismatic, or even particularly handsome. He’s not unique, coming across as reserved even when he delivers crushing news to the woman who pines for him so desperately. If he was truly a brute he would be easy to hate, but he’s far too refined for that, provoking mild dislike and a profound lack of intrigue whenever he’s onscreen.
As for Yukiko, it’s hard to keep pitying someone who is given so many opportunities to forget about a man who makes it crystal clear that he has little interest in her. But she goes on pining anyway, each fresh note of despair in her words causing this central dynamic to wilt even further. Long before it reaches its bitter conclusion, Floating Clouds has run out of steam and ideas, with half-baked plot beats involving another love interest for Kengo, Osei Mukai (Mariko Okada).
In another drama, a new character, specifically one who challenges Yukiko’s adoration of Kengo, could allow this story to develop these main characters further. But Osei is simply a crude and insincere way to bolster Yukiko’s despair and Kengo’s callousness, traits that are drilled into viewers’ heads at practically every turn. Interesting revelations are few and far between in this dreary and one-sided relationship, which meanders about as much as these characters do in their many walk-and-talk conversations.
The pair’s interactions become faintly humorous towards the film’s conclusion, like when Kengo meets Yukiko again after an undefined but significant chunk of time, only for his first words to be, “What do you mean, ‘come or I will die’?” A similarly funny moment occurs when Yukiko, who is very ill by this point but glad to be in Kengo’s company, has her pleasant expression shift to that of jealousy and heartbreak in an instant when she sees him conversing outside with another woman, even when this interaction is clearly innocent.
Are these moments intentionally funny? It’s difficult to say, but what is clear-cut is that the main thrust of this movie’s arc is dramatic. On that front, it is weighed down heavily by a screenplay that half-heartedly jogs in circles, with both leading actors and Naruse’s compelling direction only managing to breathe a small amount of life into this tired melodrama. Takamine is the clear stand-out from this cast, convincingly articulating her grief even when it feels as though the character has exhausted all possible avenues for conveying this feeling. Mori is given a much more limited role, and while he still ensures that Kengo looks invested in all that occurs around him, there’s something inscrutable about his behaviour and what he wants out of life that this film, and actor, can’t unlock.
Here, perhaps, Floating Clouds’ intentions are easier to appreciate. Yukiko has a clear direction she wants to head towards in her life, but can’t achieve her dreams since they are shared with someone who barely cares about her existence. In a film about national sorrow and discontentment, it makes a great deal of sense for this protagonist’s only shot at happiness to be contingent on the feelings of others. As for Kengo, he seems lost, and even if that’s not made particularly compelling here, one gets the sense that, like so many Japanese citizens during this period, he has little ability to recognise how he could make himself happier.
For neither of the pair ever seem truly happy. Kengo mistakes this sentiment in Yukiko when he sees her again after some time apart, confusing contentment for productivity. In a country that has been torn apart, and which has no choice but to slowly gather its broken pieces together, it’s fittingly tragic for routine to be confused with purpose, and for pleasantries to be mistaken for happiness. This is where the film can map itself onto some of the best qualities of tortured love affairs and the enormous depths of tragedy they can provoke, as David Lean did so brilliantly 10 years prior with Brief Encounter (1945). Lean’s romance soared because it knew well to expose what an awful thing it is to hide one’s pain and longing. He artfully drew this uniquely despairing feeling out of his characters, before forcing viewers to confront similar emotions when witnessing a love affair gone awry.
Floating Clouds rarely ever finds the right outlet to express these ideas, instead settling for an experience that becomes rather dull by its conclusion, when ideally it should have ramped up its tragic elements to their heart-breaking endpoint. Such a goal is impossible in a movie that meanders to an unholy extent, which, though hampering its avenues for emotional investment, doesn’t dim a sobering look at Japanese society at a particularly dispirited time in this country’s history.
JAPAN | 1955 | 123 MINUTES | 1.37:1 | BLACK & WHITE | JAPANESE
director: Mikio Naruse.
writer: Yoko Mizuki (based on the novel by Fumiko Hayashi).
starring: Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Mariko Okada, Chieko Nakakita, Daisuke Katō & Isao Yamagata.