Woman in the Dunes is the most famous Teshigahara/Abe/Takemitsu collaboration. The sands of time have not worn away its startling beauty, nor answered the fundamental questions of identity and commitment this film poses. A young widow is fed by her neighbors and forced to constantly clear her pit-house of the sands that threaten to engulf the whole village. The villagers bring a passing entomologist who has missed the bus home, to spend the night, share her work and her bed-it seems, forever. Many scenes still haunt-the woman's mysterious nocturnal labors, the man's own Sisyphean attempts to escape as the community of sand people watch from on high. Who's the insect now? "I've a job! I'm registered!" he protests, but the metamorphosis has already transpired. Teshigahara reverses the metaphor of the shifting sands of fate-here we have the shifting fates of sand, as in Beckett's "Grain upon grain..." (JB)