Floating Clouds

Floating Clouds (Ukigumo, 1955) is a Japanese melodrama from Mikio Naruse, available to watch online on iFILM. Adapted from Fumiko Hayashi's novel, it stars Hideko Takamine and Masayuki Mori.

Typist Yukiko Koda takes a wartime posting in French Indochina and falls for Kengo Tomioka, a married forestry official. He swears he will leave his wife. Then the war ends, both return to a ruined Japan, and every promise dissolves. Yukiko keeps drifting back to a man who keeps failing her, and neither of them manages to walk away.

Naruse films it without melodramatic swells: damp rooms, cheap inns, steady rain, faces stripped of glamour. This is a portrait of a woman who loves against all reason and of a defeated country with nothing left to lean on. Critics and Japanese filmmakers alike rank it among Naruse's finest work and one of the great postwar dramas. Slow and quietly devastating, it rewards anyone who loves classic Japanese cinema. Stream Floating Clouds (1955) online on iFILM.