MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Taxing Woman’ Takes Human Foibles in Its Smiling Stride

“A Taxing Woman” (at selected theaters now and at Little Tokyo Cinema 1 on June 3) is the third triumph in a row for Japan’s Juzo Itami, writer-director of “The Funeral” and “Tampopo,” two of the funniest, sharpest social comedies of the ‘80s.

Itami’s special gift is to zero in on the quirks of the Japanese character and then let us discover ourselves in his people. His amused view of human behavior in all its driving foibles and passions joins with a dynamic, spontaneous sense of the visual to give his films an exhilarating immediacy and pace. It’s as if Itami caught his people on the run but without missing the slightest detail. You have to be on your toes to keep up with this whirlwind.

This is especially true of “A Taxing Woman,” in which Itami observes the extreme lengths that Japanese will attempt to evade paying their country’s very high taxes. If you find it hard to understand our tax system, you’d have to be an economist to understand how Japan’s works, but don’t worry about it. Jump aboard and hold on tight, for Itami leads us on a dizzying chase as the implacable rookie tax inspector Ryoko (Nobuko Miyamoto) pursues the outrageously unscrupulous Gondo (Tsutomu Yamazaki), a Tokyo-based real-estate speculator and adult hotel operator.

The film’s title is a witty double-entendre, no small feat for a foreign film, for it refers not only to what Ryoko does but also what she’s like. With a severe Dutch boy haircut, a sprinkling of freckles across her face and no apparent makeup, she seems as severe as she looks. No one is spared--certainly not the operator of a pachinko parlor, where she not only scores a win but nails the owner for being $4 million in arrears. She doesn’t even let off the elderly operators of a mom-and-pop grocery whom she tricks into admitting that they don’t record the goods they consume themselves.

“You’re nice, but you’re just a bloodsucker!,” the old woman shrieks. “Why pick on poor people like us? Why don’t you go out and catch the real criminals?”

Ryoko remains impassive but seems to take the advice to heart.

“A Taxing Woman” gives the impression of being composed of a million fast setups and thus represents a tour de force for cinematographer Yonezo Maeda, for whom the film must have been a real workout. It records a furious beehive of activity involving scores of people, both those driven by greed and those intent on catching them.

For much of his picture Itami makes us feel we’re watching zealous insects at work, fueled by pure, undistracted instinct, a feeling heightened by Gondo’s loping limp which gives him the look of a scurrying spider. (Toshiyuki Honda’s striking score has the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun, heightening the frenzy.) The film becomes highly claustrophobic--as Tokyo itself so often can seem--and also takes on an intensely furtive quality as Ryoko manages to mobilize a small army of colleagues equipped with elaborate surveillance devices to entrap Gondo. Indeed, Ryoko and her co-workers begin to take an almost obscene pleasure in eavesdropping on Gondo, his gangster cohorts and his women (a common-law wife and two hysterical mistresses, regarded by him as highly expendable).

Itami races the film along toward its climax when he pauses long enough to let us--and Ryoko and Gondo themselves--discover that they’re human beings after all and not termites or ants. The effect is startling in breaking the film out into an whole new dimension, yet as it gains sentiment it thankfully never lapses into the sentimental.

If “A Taxing Woman” is a hit for Itami, it is no less so for Miyamoto and Yamazaki, who also starred in his two earlier films. Once again Itami gives them the kind of challenges and full rein to their abilities that most actors can only dream about. There are several dozen deftly sketched roles in which many veterans shine. It’s a special pleasure to watch Masahiko Tsugawa, as Ryoko’s suave superior, struggle to keep his cool, and Keiju Kobayashi, one of the Toho studios’ most reliable stars of the ‘60s, as their serenely confident boss. Perhaps Juzo Itami’s greatest accomplishment, however, is to never let “A Taxing Woman” (Times-rated: Mature) become taxing itself throughout its hefty 127-minute running time.

‘A TAXING WOMAN’

An Original Cinema release of a co-production of Itami Productions/New Century Producers. Producers Yasushi Tamaoki, Seigo Hosogoe. Writer-director Juzo Itami. Camera Yonezo Maeda. Lighting Akio Katsura. Music Toshiyuki Honda. Art director Shuji Nakamura. Film editor Akira Suzuki. With Nobuko Miyamoto, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Masahiko Tsugawa, Hideo Murota, Shuji Otaki, Daisuke Yamashita, Shinsuke Ashida, Keiju Kobayashi, Mariko Okada, Kiriko Shimizu, Kazuyo Matsui, Yasuo Daichi, Kinzo Sakura, Hajime Asoh, Shiro Ito, Eitaro Ozawa. In Japanese, with English subtitles.

Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature.