Verbal battles of the sexes are a standard feature of romantic comedies, usually as the start of an enemies-to-lovers story arc. When married couples go to war with words in films, though, it’s often the prelude to a break-up, with the climatic quarrel between Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson’s characters in Noah Baumbach’s 2019 drama “Marriage Story” being a much-praised example.
In Japan, the kakādenka — the sharp-tongued wife who lords it over her cringing husband — has long been fodder for jokes, if not a central figure in many feature-length films. So "A Beloved Wife," Shin Adachi’s comedy based on his own 2016 semi-autobiographical novel, “Chibusa ni Ka” (“Mosquito on the Breast”), is a stand-out.
Premiering in competition at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, this film about a struggling scriptwriter, Gota (Gaku Hamada), and his hot-tempered wife, Chika (Asami Mizukawa), gets laughs from the couple’s power imbalance, with Gota meekly enduring blast after blast from his irritable spouse, but it’s more than a gag fest.