Tribute to Yasuzô Masumura 2023 / Aozora musume / Japan 1957
Masumura’s sophomore feature marks his first collaboration with iconic star Ayako Wakao – a legendary partnership that would spawn twenty of the pair’s best films. Wakao plays Yûko, a willful 18-year-old high school student who leaves her small village in search of her estranged cleaning lady mother and her businessman father, who never acknowledged her. As Yûko ventures to find her place in her father’s dysfunctional household, A Cheerful Girl swiftly switches gears from a Sirkian melodrama to a blithe deconstruction of the post-war nuclear family, charged with irony, mischievousness, and utter irreverence for the venerated Japanese family drama. Filmed in gorgeously earthy pastel colors, A Cheerful Girl is one of the most atypical coming-of-age Asian pictures of the 1950s.
Joseph Fahim
89 min / Color, DCP
Director Yasuzô Masumura
/ Screenplay Yoshio Shirasaka
/ Dir. of Photography Michio Takahashi
/ Music Taichiro Kosugi
/ Sound Takeo Suda
/ Editor Tatsuji Nakasizu
/ Art Director Tokuji Shibata
/ Producer Masaichi Nagata
/ Production DAIEI studio, Kadokawa Corporation
/ Cast Ayako Wakao, Kenji Sugawara, Keizo Kawasaki
/ Sales Kadokawa Corporation
Kadokawa Corporation
2-13-12 Fujimi, Chiyoda-ku, 102-8552, Tokyo
Japan
Phone: +81 807 233 6972
E-mail: [email protected]
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