a review of 砂之女

Woman in the Dunes was an intriguing experience. The plot is simple and original: a tourist from Tokyo gets trapped in a sand dune pit where a woman lives in an old wooden house, enslaved by nearby villagers. The tourist has no choice but to stay with the woman, to his great discontent. I like this kind of philosophical, allegorical story in a surreal setting. The uncanny, claustrophobic atmosphere of the barbaric villagers versus the trapped tourist in a desolate rural area might very well have been an inspiration for Deliverance (1972). My only minor complaint is that Woman in the Dunes is too lengthy to my liking, which caused the film to become a bit boring in the last hour or so.