This review may contain spoilers
"They may act kind but will kick us into a ditch"
The Masseurs and a Woman is a gentle slice of life "seen" through the experiences of two blind masseurs. A scenic mountain getaway reveals deep loneliness and even desperation among the guests who visit the inns.Fuku and Toku walk along the mountain road to the mountain inns for the spring season after spending the winter working at the beach. The blind masseurs relish in counting the people they pass along the way. Both use their sense of smell to help them, with Toku seemingly more aware of his surroundings. At one point when a carriage passes, he can smell "a woman of Tokyo" as one of the passengers, a woman he is soon to become entangled with.
The setting for the inns is idyllic nestled in the mountains with waterfalls and a stream nearby. Students hiking in the mountains visit and are attended to by the masseurs. Fuku takes good care of the female students who bouncingly approach the road the next morning. Toku is less gentle with a rude group of male students who can barely walk by the next morning after his treatment. Toku is willing to get physical with those who carelessly run into him.
The film shows the audience that there is more than one way to experience life through our senses. Aside from smell, the sense of touch is also shown when Toku massages the Tokyo woman's shoulders and can tell she has worries. At one point, she tells him he sees too well into her. This woman with a mysterious past and haunting expression evades him as he sees too clearly.
Aside from the Tokyo woman an uncle and his nephew have come to visit his parents' graves. The boy is particularly precocious but takes a liking to the Tokyo woman. He has to stand in line because his uncle is also attracted to her as well as Toku, against his better judgement. The child's parents had recently died, and his uncle also seems melancholy.
All is not well at the inns when a string of thefts occurs. Thefts Toku fears the Tokyo woman is committing. A sense of sorrow and desperation hang over the people in the beautiful, quiet setting.
Filmed during the second Sino-Japanese War, the only comment that might refer to this time of Japan's invasions would be when one of the men comments how more women are working. I wasn't aware that at the time, masseur jobs were reserved for the blind so that they would have a way to provide income for themselves. Something that caught on in Taiwan and Korea after the invasions there.
The Masseurs and a Woman glided over the loneliness and sadness in the people at the inns without delving deeply enough for me to feel emotionally connected to them. Stories ended abruptly; secrets were revealed abruptly without the time and room for me to process them internally and unable to have the emotional reaction the music seemed to be cueing me to have. Even with that, this film is worth checking out if you are a fan of older films or of the director Shimizu Hiroshi. The scenery and themes of love, loneliness, and the need for human connection made up for some of its shortcomings.
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