Friday, December 5, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Academy Museum, Los Angeles
Filmmaker Mikio Naruse (1905–1969) directed more than 85 features across an unparalleled career that spanned pre- and postwar Japan. Perhaps the most celebrated from his later period is the gorgeous, heartbreaking melodrama Floating Clouds. The film depicts the decades-long love affair between a young working woman (frequent Naruse collaborator Hideko Takamine) and her married employer (Masayuki Mori). Like its title, this breathtaking black-and-white film drifts in and out of memory and the present day, echoing the familiar rhythms of a complicated romance. Admirers of the Present Past 2024 title Undercurrent (1956) will find similarly deft filmmaking and a keen sensitivity toward one woman’s experience in an unrequited romance.