Naruse's Summer Clouds / Iwashigumo

[Alexander Jacoby]

Dear All,
   
  Wonder if anyone has seen Summer Clouds / Iwashigumo recently and can tell me how they interpret the splendid final scene?
   
  Writing on Naruse, I've referred to many of Naruse's films ending with a "fruitless expenditure of physical energy which seems a substitute for emotional catharsis". Examples include the nearly-estranged couple throwing a ball back and forward in Sudden Rain, the geishas dancing at the end of Late Chrysanthemums and so on.
   
  I want to include Summer Clouds in this. I watched again recently my old French-subtitled video copy, but the point hangs on whether the fields ploughed by Chikage Awashima in the final scene have actually been sold. I couldn't follow the Japanese of the conversation when the father sells some land, but the French subtitles read "Il vous reste la moitie", which I took to imply that some land has been retained. Then however, the father comments that he's already planted and ploughed the fields, and the buyer (or representative of the buyer) says that this is foolish - it's too late now, since the land has been sold. I took this to refer to the fields in the last scene.
   
  A few scenes after this, all the rest of the family go to the station, but not the heroine, who is ploughing the fields. My question is - is she ploughing the land that's already been sold? In which case it would truly be fruitless. Or is this the "moitie" of land that might hypothetically have been retained? In which case it might not. 

  Any advice gratefully received!
   
  ALEX
   

 		
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