Summary:
An ambitious young tax investigator rises through the ranks of the bureau she works at while forming a friendly relationship with Hideki Gondo, a rich middle-aged man she’s investigating for tax evasion.
My Thoughts:
I watched this film because I am a huge fan of one of Itami’s other films; “Tampopo”. “Tampopo” is a film that is widely admired by the TMM staff, and strangely enough, none of us had gotten around to reviewing some of Itami’s other work. I started “A Taxing Woman” knowing very little about it, but was hoping for something as comical as “Tampopo”. Within minutes, I realized that this film wouldn’t be nearly as irreverent as “Tampopo”, and for a good twenty minutes I thought I would be disappointed by this entry, but as the plot wound on, I found myself wrapped up in the story and the characters. While I wont make any claims that this film was nearly as good as “Tampopo”, it is a very charming film that has a few rather comical moments, and overall it leaves you with a warm happy feeling inside.
“To save money, you don’t spend it. It’s as simple as that.”
Hideki Gondo (Tsutomu Yamazaki, “Kagemusha”) is the best tax evader there is; he finds his way around everything and never leaves any evidence. Ryoko Itakura (Nobuko Miyamoto, “The Funeral”) is a young ambitious tax investigator working her way up the ranks of her bureau. While Itakura is just starting out, she begins a friendly relationship with Gondo, and Gondo, realizing how easy it will be to outsmart her at first, finds Itakura charming. But as Itakura continues to persevere and soon beings breaking cases, slowly working her way towards Gondo.
I think the thing that I really liked most about this film were the themes that it conveyed. This is really a feminist film. It’s the story of a young woman going into a profession that is dominated primarily by men; in the beginning, many of the men underestimate Itakura, but as the story goes on, she becomes invaluable to the team. A lot of this is elevated by Miyamoto’s incredibly charming portrayal of Itakura. She’s an incredibly likeable character, not only because she’s hard working and diligent, but she’s good-natured too. She realizes that even though Gondo is breaking the law, he still has a personal life and a family, and she treats him with respect and dignity. She’s patient and polite, and in the end that helps her yield more results than her male counterparts. This is illustrated best in once of the more comical scenes, when a group of male tax investigators insist that a woman is hiding a key in her dress, and ask her to hand it over; the woman, in a fit of mania, removes her clothing and tosses it at the bewildered investigators, yelling at them to search her. Shortly after this happens, Itakura finds the key that the investigators were looking for in a different place. The way Itami has crafted Itakura’s character is just wonderful; she’s bubbly enough to always give off a positive light, but she’s never too effervescent that we don’t believe she’s competent in her job- in fact just the opposite- she appears to be the Sherlock Holmes of tax evasion cases. Itami and Miyamoto were actually married for almost thirty years, but Itami, unfortunately, committed suicide in 1997.
I actually really enjoyed the story for this film as well, though I will admit there are some slower moments and some scenes that feel rather repetitive. The bulk of this film is Itakura finding little clues that slowly lead her towards another indictment, which, then in turn hopefully leads he to another indictment, again and again until she gets to Gondo. As Itakura is always learning more things and meeting new people, it never feels like the film comes to a standstill, but during the second act I did start to wonder how many scenes I was going to watch of the Tax Investigators confiscating money and expensive items. As I’ve already mentioned, this wasn’t as funny as “Tampopo”, but it did have enough humor to keep the tone light and fun, so that certainly helped. I can’t imagine this film would’ve been nearly as entertaining had the material been played completely straight. As the film draws to a close, the story becomes more endearing than I would’ve thought from a story like this, and it continuously subverts your expectations on how the film will end.
Verdict:
Overall I really enjoyed this film, though, again, it’s no “Tampopo”. This is a well-crafted flick from Itami, and I’m certainly glad I watched it, though if you are uninitiated with Itami’s work I wouldn’t start here. This is a fun, twisting dramedy with a few true laugh out loud moments; come for the charm, stay for the feel good story.
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