Kichitaro Negishi's "Villon no Tsuma" ("Villon's Wife") is based on an Osamu Dazai short story with autobiographical overtones: An alcoholic writer steals a large sum of money from a small drinking establishment and, when he does a disappearing act, his wife offers to pay it back by working for the owners as a waitress. Despite her popularity with the customers, she suffers various sorts of humiliation and abuse, but stands by her man.
Using a script by Yozo Tanaka, Negishi embellishes on this story with new characters and subplots, but his film remains true to the original in what can only be called its retrograde outlines, especially from a Western point of view.
The wife, Sachi (Takako Matsu), is an intelligent, sensitive, resourceful woman living in a hell created almost entirely by her drunken, dissolute husband, Otani (Tadanobu Asano). Why does she put up with it?