The portrait business isn’t what it used to be. Working at the photo studio that he inherited from his father, the protagonist of “Woman of the Photographs” looks like a throwback to a bygone era, complete with white three-piece suit and ever-present cigarette.
Yet Kai (Hideki Nagai), the tight-lipped photographer, has adapted with the times. While he’s a wiz with a camera, he’s a master at Photoshop: lightening skin, removing blemishes and performing the kinds of cosmetic enhancements that would normally require expensive surgery. It’s a dishonest profession, but someone has to do it.
The gap between reality and the version of life that we choose to present to the world is a central concern of writer and director Takeshi Kushida’s debut feature. This offbeat fable riffs loosely on author Kobo Abe’s existentialist novel, “The Woman in the Dunes,” without overplaying the resemblance.