Like Repast and Husband and Wife, this film features Ken Uehara as the husband in a troubled marriage. But Wife is dissimilar to many of Naruse's films in that here, the wife (played by the always pitch-perfect Hideko Takamine) seems just as troublesome as the husband. “Takamine sleeps in, eschews housework, and even leaves hairs in (her husband's) bento lunches-and, when she finds out about an affair with his widowed secretary, seems to get even more unsympathetic” (Film Forum). As always, Naruse artfully adapts Fumiko Hayashi's novel into an eloquent expression of the everyday irritations that connect to deeper currents of thwarted emotion.