"The Woman Who Buys a Local Newspaper" is another of those TV movies based on the works by Seicho Matsumoto, one of Japan's most famous mystery writers. His novels and short stories have been remade, redone, and recycled so much in Japan that this particular story alone with its rather thin plot has been adapted nine times. That's more than any individual work by Agatha Christie (except, perhaps, "And Then There Were None") and this is not even one of Matsumoto's most highly regarded works.
Like most of Matsumoto's stories, this is a thriller, a murder mystery more precisely in which the detective is novelist Ryuji Sugimoto. I must confess I quite like the premise which sees a mysterious woman from Tokyo buy a subscription to a newspaper from a small town she doesn't live in just because she enjoys Mr Sugimoto's novel which is being serialized there. A few days later, however, she cancels her subscription saying that the novel has become boring. Driven as much by vanity as by professional curiosity, Ryuji investigates the woman and finds she has no idea who he is. Meanwhile, the dead bodies of a pair of adulterers are found in the small town. The police think it's a double suicide but Ryuji becomes convinced that they were murdered by the mystery woman.
Unfortunately, this TV movie is not a particularly engaging one mainly due to its listless nature. Despite a solid cast, it never manages to generate much excitement or suspense. It proceeds at a sluggish pace and without any real atmosphere or mystery. None of the cast seems particularly invested either and their bored performances contribute to the overall feeling of ennui which pervades the entire picture.
Ryuji is played by none other than Masakazu Tamura, one of the most charismatic and interesting Japanese actors. Sadly, his performance here is curiously lacking in energy. He seems tired and frail and his characteristic voice is hoarse and quiet. He seems to have lost that particular spark of excitement that used to be present in all of his performances. Here his turn as the mystery writer turned detective is rather dull and I was not surprised to find out that this was his penultimate performance before his untimely death in 2021.
Slightly more effective is Ryoko Hirosue as the mystery woman. She brings a certain sinister charm and sexiness to the role but she cannot salvage her severely underwritten character. Ryuji and she are supposed to develop a romantic relationship with one another but Hirosue and Tamura share no chemistry whatsoever and their relationship is as flat and dull as the movie itself. For one, he is almost 40 years her senior (and appears older) but more importantly, he seems so tired and bored that she might as well be trying to fall in love with one of the set walls. I did like some of the supporting cast, however, especially Asami Mizukawa as Ryuji's overly enthusiastic assistant.
The story is decent but the denouement is quite disappointing and there is simply not enough material here for a 110-minute movie. "The Woman Who Buys a Local Newspaper" was originally a 30-page short story and I could see it working as an hour-long episode of an anthology series but when it is stretched to almost double that runtime its weaknesses begin to show. Especially, I should add, in a production as flat and unambitious as this.
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