A Woman's Work tackles the changing dynamics between men and women-and their jobs-with an improvised acting aesthetic, comic flair, and off-the-cuff shooting style more reminiscent of Mike Leigh than of anything in current Japanese cinema. Asami is a professional shogi player who's been on a losing streak since marrying Kazuya, a mousy but devoted salaryman. Her strong-willed sister Rina, meanwhile, is encountering problems of another kind in her relationship with her long-haired, chronically unemployed boyfriend Hiroki. As the shogi tournament heats up, so do the mind-games at home, with each person planning emotional moves and counter-moves to maintain some form of equilibrium. Slyly underlining the connection between sexual dynamics and economic power, A Woman's Work is further strengthened by the extraordinary interplay, both comic and serious, of its cast (including cult director Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: Iron Man, Gemini) as Kazuya), and by an immediacy that feels more like eavesdropping on conversation than watching fiction.