Supermarket Woman,
directed by Itami Juzo, is a charming film about consumerism, food, small
business vs. big business, and the importance of ethics in owning and running a
business. It tells the story of Goro,
the kind, widowed owner of “Honest Goro”, a small supermarket with a lot of
potential but is held back by sloppy caretaking and stubborn ideals. But when Goro runs into an old friend from
grade school, Hanako, his fortune is soon to change. Hanako is a widowed housewife
with a wealth of knowledge about supermarkets and how to run them effectively
and fairly. When a rival supermarket
called “Bargains Galore”, that sells poor-quality products at low prices, opens
nearby and threatens to put Goro out of business, Goro asks Hanako for help in
improving his store. Together they
evaluate every aspect of the store. In
the face of big business owners trying to buy him out, Goro is forced to change
his stingy ways.
Goro’s store undergoes
changes from making respectable rice balls with real roe, to packing lunch
boxes with fresh food instead of yesterday’s leftovers. Bargains Galore wants to buy them out,
including all of their workers, some of whom (the “pro” chefs in the back)
disagree with the changes Hanako and the boss have instigated and go behind his
back to make deals with Bargains Galore.
Our two protagonists have until New Years to save their store otherwise
they’ll be sold to Galore.
While critiquing the
consumer society in Japan and the danger of big businesses, Supermarket Woman
maintains its humor and excitement. For
being a film about a supermarket, a typically humdrum setting, it’s still a fun
movie to watch and surprisingly funny. A
quote on the DVD cover from Itami sums this idea up nicely: “I don’t want to
make difficult movies. I want to make
interesting movies about difficult subjects… I make movies to get the Japanese
to look in the mirror.” Not only does
Supermarket Woman make you think about the consumer, but also about the woman’s
role as housewife and the skill that comes with it that seems to be overlooked;
but also the ideologies of women in Japan which can be seen in many of Itami’s
films.
Since we’re talking
about food and women in relation to this film and Itami, of course we have to
talk about Tampopo. These two films
showcase food as an important part of Japanese culture and in our lives in
general. Tampopo’s narrative style is
post-modern, using subplots and main plots to connect its themes and
messages. Both films follow a pair of
characters, character A with a problem and character B with the solution which
involves training and teaching character A.
One difference however is in Tampopo, Goro (conveniently named the same
in both films) trains Tampopo the art of noodle making and running a successful
noodle shop. The potential is there
along and Goro helps Tampopo fulfill it.
In Supermarket Woman, Goro seems remarkably more helpless. We see him coping with the death of his wife
by drinking and sleeping a lot. Here, Hanako is the heroine who steps in with
her wit and knowledge to save the day by bringing out the good in Goro. This being said, due to the ideologies of
women in Japan, both movie’s female protagonists have moments of intense
dependence on their male counterpart.
This is something I’ve noticed in a lot of the films we’ve watched over
the semester.
Another example of this
in Supermarket Woman is the romance and flirtation. The pair have an interesting relationship,
both having lost their spouses early. Hanako
makes it clear that she’s not interested in Goro but there is obviously a
connection between them. Hanako often
teases Goro and behaves in a grade-school-buddy type of manner. Later on in the film though, Hanako’s reasons
for rejecting his flirtatious offers become less focused on her feelings toward
Goro and more about how their relationship would be received by the other
workers. Hanako ends up in bed with
Goro, in a strange obligatory sex scene, and she can’t take him seriously. The way the film continues leads the viewer
to believe that they weren’t intimate with one another. Even though she denies him, there’s still an
unsettling feeling of her dependence on Goro. Hanako mentions the idea of “freshness”
or what I interpret as purity in some sense; that a woman’s body is well kept
and “good” by some perverted standard so long as she is married and having sex
with her partner regularly. If not, like
in Hanako’s case, she may be deemed “unfresh”.
Hence the worry, embarrassment and shyness she expresses in these
scenes.
Goro is presented in a good
light, even though he has obvious undesirable traits. He originally sees no harm in repacking and
selling old meat and physically makes a move on Hanako while she’s praying to
his wife’s memory. But, he learns and grows and stays true to the name of his
store, so he’s not perceived in such a bad light. He’s like a helpless puppy
and the audience can’t say no to that face.
Despite this obvious dependence on Hanako, Goro is still above her. This patriarchal dominance, as seen through
Hanako’s dependence on him, is more prevalent, say, in Tampopo but is
especially clear in the flirtatious scenes between Hanako and Goro. After he rescues her from a runaway freezer
truck (from a scene I’ll discuss later), he warms up her unconscious body with
his and gives her a bath. When she wakes
up, he laughs and tells her she shouldn’t have worried about her “freshness”,
saying it was “not as bad as she thought”.
Not only is this creepy, but it shows the overt sexism and unfairness in
ideologies and overall dichotomy of genders.
One scene I thought was
particularly entertaining and well-done was the chase scene. Hanako discovers that the meat dealer is
colluding with the main butcher and stealing the expensive Kobe beef. She and Goro are dressed in ridiculous Christmas
outfits so Hanako spends the whole scene chasing the thief around the store in
a large penguin suit. The music accompanies
the action in a great way by adding to the dramatics and almost slap-stick
humor. Like many good directors, Itami
subtly ties together bits of the plot.
In this scene in particular, Hanako uses the trolley to stop the
thief. These trolleys are unused by the
store but were bought by Goro in hopes that the kitchen could be set up in
assembly line fashion but to no avail.
This scene also vaguely reminded me of the old woman who squeezed the
food in Tampopo. It’s a hysterical chase
scene, and funny enough the store clerk is played by the same actor who plays
Goro in Supermarket Woman!
This scene is just
another example of one of the many times in which Itami uses humor and energy
to draw in the audience in order to achieve his goal of getting viewers to
think about the issue he’s addressing.
The events in this film are absurd and often silly, though not
necessarily unrealistic.
This Itami film, though
not as notably famous as Tampopo or A Taxing Woman, was and is important and relevant
to Japanese society and many others as well.
During this time in Japan (1996), Japan continued to be influenced by
the west. Commercialism and consumerism
were inflating and like many other places, dealt with the struggle between
small, locally owned business and chains or corporations. As a post-modern director, Itami constantly
tried to get his audience to reflect on themselves and the power they have to
do right in Japanese society.
One successful tactic
Itami uses to reach his audience in this way is close-ups. Camera work in general is a subtle way of
provoking emotion from the audience or invoking moods and ideas into a scene even
after it has been shot. These close-ups
are frequent and often occur when it concerns how a fair supermarket should be
run and how they should behave. To me, these
are Itami’s feelings directly voiced to the audience. Yes, in the film Hanako is literally speaking
to her fellow employees but she’s addressing the Japanese audience at the time,
now, and all of us. One could even argue
that Goro represents all of us. Even if
we’re not exactly helpless, Hanako is there to guide us down a morally fair,
ethical and successful path to fight the corruption.
Supermarket Woman is a
brilliantly crafted film that provokes thought from the audience and critiques
consumerism in a timeless way. I can see
why it’s not as popular as some of Itami’s other films, as it is less
conventionally exciting and arguably slower.
This being said, it is a very interesting film even in pair with Tampopo
and sends its director’s message across in an extremely effective way.
