stultifying home life
新年を迎え、The Japan Timesの記事では昨年公開された邦画からトップ10作品を選定しています。
Top 10 films of 2015: War, slackers and a love hotel
Indie directors have taken domestic cinema in some challenging directions
It’s hard to be an optimist about the present state of Japanese cinema. One reason is the decline of the mid-budget film, previously the refuge of much quality work, with many talented directors going either fully commercial or extremely indie. Micro-budget films are not inferior per se but their subject matter tends to be limited. There are an awful lot of films now about slackers scraping by without partners or prospects. Some, with no apologies, are on my top 10 list for 2015.
中略
1 Three Stories of Love (Koibitotachi): Ryosuke Hashiguchi developed this ensemble drama from an actor’s workshop and cast it with unknowns. But he has also finely honed its loosely connected stories of three people emotionally adrift: a lonely bridge inspector (Atsushi Shinohara) grieving his murdered wife, a middle-aged housewife longing to escape her stultifying home life and a homosexual lawyer rightfully dumped by his younger lover. The climax is both a brilliant tying together and a quietly stirring celebration of life.
以下省略
“stultifying”を取り上げます。ここでは動詞“stultify”の現在分詞を形容詞的に用いています。その原型不定詞語義から確認していくと、『Genius』 (大修館書店)では「1.正式…を無益［無意味］なものにする 2.[時に〜oneself]…を愚かに見せる、…の恥をさらす 3法[時に〜oneself](精神鑑定により)無能力を申し立てる［証明する］」と確認できました。
LDOCEでは”stultifying: so boring that you feel as though you are losing your ability to think”と定義されています。これを考慮し、本文の“a middle-aged housewife longing to escape her stultifying home life”に訳をつけると「家庭での空虚な日々から抜け出したい主婦」辺りが適当でしょうか。
同記事の記者 Mark Shilling氏は公開当時にも『恋人たち』を論評しており、星5つ中4.5と高く評価、その中で“To put it as simply and plainly as Toko might herself, “Three Stories of Love” is the best film I’ve seen all year. “とまで称しています。高評を受けてか、公開当時は狭い規模での公開でしたが、じわじわとその範囲を広げているようです。樋口亮輔監督の七年振りの新作となった本作、機会を見つけて是非劇場に足を運びたいものです
(あいづ)
