The Wash Movie Review

The Wash is a wise, gentle film about the death of love and its rebirth. Nobu McCarthy portrays a woman who is leaving her husband after 40 years, yet who continues to care about him even though she is no longer in love with him. After watching film after film in which the Japanese male is portrayed as cold and unfeeling and wondering how he could stand such loneliness, viewers finally have an opportunity to see and hear Asian-American writer Philip Kan Kotanda expose the truth about such characters: maybe they cannot stand it any more than the women who love them. The Oscar-nominated actor Mako does a masterful job of revealing all the underlying cracks in the armor. Sab Shimono plays a very different type of man, the one Nobu's character has been yearning for all her life. When she is finally confronted with his kindness and sensitivity, all the old habits that bind her to her husband no longer mean anything. It is rare for a film to wring such extraordinary mileage out of very simple truths about relationships, but Philip Kan Kotanda is a writer with a unique ability to dig beneath rituals and structures. Deeply enhanced by Michael Toshiyuki Uno's intimate direction, The Wash provides a memorable and unusual film experience.

1988 94m/C Mako, Nobu McCarthy, Sab Shimono; D: Michael Toshiyuki Uno; W: Philip Kan Kotanda; C: Walt Lloyd. VHS, LV