Portrait of Chieko is a 1967 film from Japan directed by Noboru Nakamura.
The story, which takes place over 27 years, recounts the life of Kōtarō Takamura
and his wife Chieko. It opens in 1911 with Kotaro a young artist and poet, well-known in the artistic community but not particularly successful. Mutual friends introduce Kotaro to Chieko Naganuma, daughter of a brewer, and herself an artist of some talent. They hit it off, and soon they are married.
Years pass, and while the Takamuras are never able to have children, theirs remains a happy marriage. Eventually Kotaro establishes himself as a prosperous artist. However, Chieko's artistic career never quite takes off. Much worse, she starts behaving erratically and showing signs of mental illness. Eventually, she is diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Tropes:
- Biopic: Of the lives, and marriage, of Kotaro and Chieko Nakamura.
- Call-Back:
- When Chieko and Kotaro are young and poor, an obnoxious businessman offers to buy some wooden crickets that Kotaro carved. He refuses, because he carved them for Chieko and she likes them. Towards the end, when she has a major breakdown in the home, the crickets are shown on the floor where they fell.
- Chieko and Kotaro see a young man on a beach who is continually ringing a cowbell-like device and yelling. Kotaro tells her that the young man is pining for his lost love who has gone away. Later in the film, after Chieko's schizophrenia has gotten much worse, Kotaro leaves her in the care of her niece and goes back home. The next morning Chieko goes to the beach, clangs the bell, and calls out his name.
- Cherry Blossoms: Shots of cherry blossoms in full bloom, strongly associated with Japan, also suggest the passage of time, and in this case introduces a four-year Time Skip to 1915.
- Distant Finale: The brief epilogue is undated, but shows Kotaro obviously much older, with white hair and a beard. He is carving a bust of his late wife.
- Dramatic Drop: Chieko dramatically drops the telephone receiver after getting the call that her father has died in a fire.
- Driven to Suicide: A young man in an art gallery slices up a painting that Kotaro and Chieko are looking at, then leaps out a third-floor window to his death. No further motivation is given.
- Geisha: The first scene, before Kotaro meets Chieko, has him in a bar in the company of a geisha harmed Osato. She seems to be an old-school geisha of the companionship and conversation nature, not a sex worker.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Played with. Kotaro and Chieko pay a visit to her parents. Her father is coughing heavily. It seems like a sure signal that he's got a fatal illness—and then he dies in a fire.
- The Matchmaker: Kotaro's friends the Tsubakis, who match him up successfully with Chieko.
- Piggyback Cute: Played for Drama. Kotaro gives Chieko a piggyback ride from the beach, but it's because she's had another schizophrenic episode and is unable to walk.
- Sanity Slippage: Chieko starts acting increasingly erratically. She starts having hallucinations. She gets the idea that her husband is a horse and demands to ride him. She tries to kill herself with an overdose of drugs. She picks up a neighbor's baby, and then attempts to run away with the baby, on a crowded street in broad daylight. Eventually she's diagnosed with schizophrenia. What's worse is that, as her doctor notes, she's aware of it. At one point she tells Kotaro she's going insane and doesn't have much time left.
- Starving Artist: For a time Kotaro really struggles to make money. At one point his father buys one of his sculptures, plainly because he wants Kotaro and Chieko to have something to eat.
- Time Skip: There are time skips from 1911 (Kotaro and Chieko meet and fall in love) to 1915 (young married couple) to 1932 (Kotaro a success, but Chieko slips into schizophrenia) to 1938 (Chieko dies) and the undated but clearly Distant Finale (Kotaro sculpting a bust of Chieko).
- The X of Y: Portrait of Chieko
