Comical Sturm und Drang , all in the family

"What does woman want?" Freud famously asked -- a question that is just as famously unanswerable. At the dawn of the modern feminist era, however, many women seemed to want what Anais Nin, in a 1974 essay for Playgirl, dubbed "the Sensitive Man." This paragon, she wrote, was "the natural sincere man without stance or display, nonassertive, the one concerned with true values, not ambition, who hates war and greed, commercialism and political expediency." A guy, in other words, who would stay home with the kids and do the laundry while his significant other went out into the world to fulfill her inborn talents, express her inner self and pay the mortgage.

In "Rendan (Four-Handed Piano Performance)," a family comedy directed by and starring Naoto Takenaka, we get another answer to Freud's question: Today's woman, with her high-powered career, her designer wardrobe and her young lovers on the side, wants a divorce from the Sensitive Man. The poor dweeb can't win for losing.

The Sensitive Man in question is Shotaro Sasaki (Takenaka), who has inherited property from his landlord father, including the big, gloomy Western-style house in which he lives with wife Minako (Yuki Amami), teenage daughter Mari (Keika Fukitsuka) and 10-year-old son Toru (Yuta Minowa). Thus supplied with a steady income, he has been free to pursue his real interests: cooking, housekeeping and raising his two children. Meanwhile, Minako, a statuesque beauty who towers over her diminutive husband, has powered her way into an executive job with a construction company.