A Woman's Place is about a large family: an elderly couple who run a small market and their six adult children, all of whom except for one are women. The parents look on in bemused consternation as their offspring stumble through life. Three of the children are unmarried and are looking to change that with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The three oldest offspring are married but the stresses of employment and philandering don't make for the strongest case for matrimony. And then there is Yoshiko (played by Hideko Takamine) who was married to a son who has died before the movie begins. The parents treat her like another daughter while many of the other family members take her for granted and treat her almost like a servant. Add to this a number of other in-laws, grandchildren and other relatives and you have a pretty large cast of characters to keep track of.

The movie is fairly plotless, as most of the movie is taken up with just keeping track of the characters as they go about their lives. The tone is lighter than most of the other Naruse movies I have seen but it doesn't stay that way as an element of sadness takes hold by the end. Overall, this almost feels more like an Ozu movie than a Naruse one, but that is not a complaint. It is a melding of the best of both directors.

Another sprawling extended family story. Toho must have loved these in the early 60s -- as they brought in Ozu to do one to (End of Summer). Perhaps they liked showing off their large roster of excellent stars? In part, rather like a first draft of "Yearning". Hideko Takamine is the widow of the oldest son of an extended family -- and runs the family's grocery. The upcoming threat of super-marketization is mentioned in passing -- but not followed through here. Much of the machinations here involve a marriage proposal for one of the younger daughters. The cast is marvelous -- with Chishu Ryu and Haruko Sugimura as the senior generation -- and with Yoko Tsulasa, Reiko Dan, Keiko Awaji, Keiju Kobayashi, Daisuke Kato and Tatsuya Mihashi as just _some_ of the children and in-laws and family connections. The plot starts as wry and sarcastic, but veers into seeming unnecessary high melodrama and pathos right before the end. Even here, a strange sarcastic tone creeps in -- as some of the crew behaves very casually at what ought to be a wrenching funeral.

Not on the same level as the extended family dramas that _are_ included in the current traveling Naruse retrospective -- but entertaining for fans of the many stars.