Repast (film)

Repast (めし, Meshi) is a 1951 Japanese drama and shōshimin-eiga film directed by Mikio Naruse and starring Setsuko Hara.

The situation worsens when her pretty niece, fleeing from her parents' plans for an arranged marriage, comes to stay and the husband responds to her flirtatious behaviour.

Dissatisfied with his efforts to improve their household life, she leaves with her niece for Tokyo to stay with her family for a while, but finally returns, resigning to marital conventions.

Repast was the first of a series of six films directed by Naruse based on works by Fumiko Hayashi, "a novelist whose pessimistic outlook matched his own" (Alexander Jacoby).

[3][6] According to screenwriter Toshirō Ide, he and his co-writer Sumie Tanaka had wanted to finish the story with the couple's divorce, but this was vetoed by the studio in favour of a conclusion with, as contemporary critic Takao Toda put it, "mass appeal".