12 Chinamen And a Woman

Laurindo Almeida, a brilliant Brazilian guitarist who was equally skilled at both classical music and bossa novas, gained famed originally for his work with Bud Shank in the mid-1950s. However, in the 1960s, his string of LPs for Capitol were generally quite commercial and overly brief. This album is fairly typical in that the material contains a few songs used widely in jazz (such as "Secret Love" and "Here's that Rainy Day"), current pop tunes ("Call Me" and "Goin' Out of My Head") and a few lesser-known numbers. All 11 performances clock in between two and four minutes, as Almeida is joined by an anonymous string section, background horns and rhythm players, all arranged unimaginatively by Lex de Azevedo. The playing is pleasing but very predictable, and at best these soothing sounds work well as background music.

The dignified heir to Koji Wakamatsu's glorious renegade film works, A Woman and War is a darker-than-hell moral shocker set towards the end of WWII. Nomura (Masatoshi Nagase) is a writer in despair. His companion is a former prostitute (Noriko Eguchi), who works in a bar. Many years ago, her father sold her to a brothel due to the family's severe financial hardships. The writer and the woman agree to live as husband and wife until the war ends. Meanwhile, Ohira (Jun Murakami) fought for Japan in China, and participated in unconscionable acts against civilians in the name of war. Returning to Japan with only one arm and a broken soul, he begins to prey on innocent women.

A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly they reveal themselves to each other, finding that each is a widow/widower. Each is slow to reveal anything personal so that each revelation is hidden by a misperception. They become friends, then close friends, and then she reveals that she can't have a lover because, for her, her husband's memory is still too strong. Much of the film is told wordlessly in action, or through hearing one of their thoughts as they go about their day.