At last, a mountain climbing noir! While Yasuzô Masumura’s Tsuma wa kokuhaku suru (US: A Wife Confesses) unfolds around an extraordinary physical premise (during a mountain climbing accident, a wife cuts the rope to save herself and her lover while killing her husband), the more fascinating aspects of this crime thriller drama are the development, revelation, and unraveling of the relationships among the three primary characters. (Still, enjoy the view from above as the victim’s body drops and smashes down the mountainside). Narrated by alternating current action with courtroom testimony flashbacks, the film stars Ayako Wakao as the complex femme fatale character, Ayako Takigawa, who pleads a variation of self-defense (she had to release the husband to save herself), and, for much of the film, we’re unsure what exactly happened and why, especially since her supposed lover Osamu Kôda (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) denies the nature of their relationship at the time of the incident, claiming credibly that they only fell in love during the trial. It turns out the truth is elusive not only to the jury (after the verdict is read, the film still has another 30 minutes to go) but even to the suspect, who spends the film’s final act in a painful daze traveling a mental wasteland of possibilities. All of the performances are excellent, but deserving of special notice is Eitarô Ozawa as Ayako’s drunken slimeball of a husband. The film’s visual style is restrained, but Manabe’s weird, moody, surreal score adds a perfect layer of dissonance, notes and sounds repeated seemingly at random to reinforce the characters’ mental torment.