The movie Cutie and the Boxer is a breathtaking and touching movie. It is about a married couple who go through a lot in their marriage due to their similar professions in art. The couple goes through poverty and struggle with selling their work. Ushio Shinohara is a painter and sculptor; he spends most of his time painting with his boxing gloves equipped with paint-soaked sponges. His wife, Noriko Shinohara is also a painter and is also a painter. The movie is mainly through her perspective and the troubles she went through during their marriage due to Ushio’s lack of responsibility. In the movie Ushio goes through a phase of alcoholism that ruins their chances of selling paintings and the quality of their relationship.
Ushio and Noriko met when Noriko was visiting New York from Japan to study art. Ushio was 41 and Noriko was 19. Noriko stopped chasing her dreams of art to become Ushio’s assistant. She fell in love with him instantly and didn’t think about her future with him or her future with art. A couple months later Noriko becomes pregnant with Ushio’s child making them struggle even more. With Ushio in a big spiral of alcoholism and Noriko always worrying about money their son was raised poorly and became an alcoholic himself. However, Noriko and Ushio’s love were still unbreakable. When Ushio goes to Japan to sell his sculptures at lower prices Noriko is annoyed with him because she wants him to earn more. However, when he returns from Japan Noriko come running down the stairs showing she doesn’t hold a grudge and she will always love Ushio even though she’s not happy most of the time.
Throughout the movie Noriko is faced with the challenge of helping Ushio with his work and not working on her own. She also goes through the conflict of having to take care of their baby almost by herself and cook dinner and clean while Ushio works on his artwork that doesn’t sell. Their whole time together they live paycheck to paycheck struggling on rent and utilities while trying to sell pieces to get by month by month. The unstoppable struggle of the art industry drags them down all until Ushio turns 80. After Ushio’s 80th birthday things start going right for them. Ushio gets more exposure while his wife has a coming of age and realizes who she realizes she is after creating Cutie and Bully, a cartoonish story type painting that is about Noriko and Ushio and how Ushio is mean to her and isn’t responsible for his actions. As Noriko is coming to these realizations, she becomes more straightforward and starts getting more exposure for herself.
Ushio meets an art dealer that wants to show his work in his gallery. Ushio sets up all of his work and Noriko ends up getting her work shown in another room in the same gallery. When Ushio is looking at Noriko’s work, he admits he’s jealous and asks about Cutie and Bullie and finds out its about him and Noriko. After that Noriko tells Ushio that she works better when he is not around, and he gets offended and leaves in a storm yelling “Goodbye!”. Ushio works on a big piece in his studio called the octopus and puts a lot of effort into it. Noriko comes around and he asks Noriko what she thinks about it. She straightforwardly said it is not good and walks away. Ushio becomes determined to make this piece better coming to the realization that his wife is going to achieve his dream before he gets to. He eventually makes the piece better to show his wife he is not a bad artist and he can do works by himself. This scene especially is very inspirational because he just wants to make his wife happy and doesn’t want her to look at him like a low life lazy artist, so he tries to prove himself to her with the thought that she is better than him in the back of his head.
Getting closer to the end of the movie there are cinematic shots of Noriko and Ushio painting and working on pieces with them talking about their experience in the art industry saying how the art industry is a struggle and there is always a lingering struggle in the art industry. The Cutie and Bullie paintings in the gallery are shown with hearts drawn around the section showing how Cutie has finally learned to tame the bull meaning Noriko has finally learned how to tame Ushio. The ending really surprised me because I didn’t expect for Noriko to be unhappy the whole relationship. I also didn’t expect to be such an emotional ending, it went from Noriko and Ushio struggling with money to having their work shown in a gallery with conflicts between the couple.
