ABSTRACT
Hiroshi Teshigahara's film Woman of the Dunes, set in contemporary Japan, is about a woman who cannot face leaving a place and about a man who comes to accept that same place after he is forced to live in it. Woman of the Dunesshows dwelling as a constraining element, yet still a necessity. In Woman of the Dunes both the woman and the man are hidden away, one by choice and the other as a prisoner. Yet the prisoner comes to accept his capture and to relish it, to appreciate that the limits placed around him have opened him to his place in the world. An opening creates a means of exit and of return. It is our means of allowing or denying others access into our exclusion and the choice is ours. It argues that we can do this by the positive use of the limits of our dwelling.
