As a female director in 1950s Japan, Kinuyo Tanaka was quite a rarity, and some may find worth in seeing the film for that reason alone, or, conversely, worry that that is the *only* reason it receives any approbation, but avoiding those two extremes and looking at the film objectively, it is well worth your time, especially if you are familiar with the works of directors (like Ozu and Naruse) of family- or women-oriented Japanese films of the 50s. If you assume from the broad plot outline - a woman suffers from breast cancer, while trying to raise two children and make ends meet and to pursue her interest in writing poetry, despite her unemployed (and philandering) husband - that you are in for a simplistic tearjerker, you will be surprised. The protagonist (Fumiko) is not a saint, and has complex relationships with each of the other major adult characters, including romantic desires for two very different men after divorcing her husband. Her battle with cancer is presented with some realism and jarring moments (a friend recoils in horror when she gets a glimpse of Fumiko's scars after a double mastectomy; an ominous corridor, down which cancer patients who have passed on are wheeled to the morgue, looms outside her room at the hospital). One might even call some moments Bergman-esque. Pacing and camera angles are expertly handled by director Tanaka, and cliches are for the most part avoided. A word about the title: "Eternal Breasts" is not a good English translation at all. "Eternal" does not modify "breasts" in the Japanese title. It's literally more like "Above and Beyond Breasts, The Getting Used to Permanence," or maybe "Becoming Accustomed to the Permanent Condition of Being More Than Breasts." I watched it on the Criterion Channel, which called it "Forever a Woman," which is not really a translation, but does make sense as a title in English.

Yumeji Tsukiokam. Is the mother of two and wife of Junkichi Orimoto. He is out of a job, drinking heavily, and dislikes her efforts to become a poet. He cheats on her with an old girlfriend, so she leaves him. Then she comes down with breast cancer. She gets a mastectomy. Then it metastasizes, just as her gloomy poems become the rage of the Tokyo literary set. Reporter Ryôji Hayama writes of her travails, and goes to visit her. At first she is defiant, but gradually comes to trust him as her life sinks low.

Kinuyo Tanaka directed this movie about misery, death, and acceptance ina way that had me looking for one ray of sunshine. Alas, there was none. The most that one can claim for it is a pain-filled stoicism on the part of Miss Tsukiokam and perhaps a little longing for dignity that the cancer strips away from her.

I don't like this movie. It is 110 minutes of tormenting an unhappy Miss Tsukiokam to no purpose except to urge acceptance of life's cruelties. But it certainly makes that point forthrightly.