Director Yoshishige Yoshida's fourth feature film and his first in colour is a sumptuously produced and immaculately directed Women's Picture reminiscent of the Hollywood model both visually and for its wistful music by Hikaru Hayashi. The film is handsomely shot in widescreen in the spa town of Akitsu, where heroine Mariko Okada owns a hotel and - this being a Japanese film - is immediately invited by hero Hiroyuki Nagato to join him in a suicide pact. She declines, but they continue to meet for occasional resumptions of their physical relationship over a seventeen year period despite the fact he now has a wife and daughter.
The film rapidly becomes a Japanese equivalent of 'Back Street', in which Okada belies her early charmingly robust initial persona by becoming more and more morbidly obsessed with Nagato, who foolishly persists with their affair, despite it plainly taking an increasingly unhealthy turn. The film builds to a melodramatic conclusion that takes place in 1962, the same year Wong Kar-wai's 'In the Mood for Love' commences. Both films look wonderful, but while Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung's relationship in the latter is close but never consummated, that between Okada and Nagato continues to be physical yet rashly one-sided, with consequences as devastating as they are foreseeable to anyone except Nagato.
The film rapidly becomes a Japanese equivalent of 'Back Street', in which Okada belies her early charmingly robust initial persona by becoming more and more morbidly obsessed with Nagato, who foolishly persists with their affair, despite it plainly taking an increasingly unhealthy turn. The film builds to a melodramatic conclusion that takes place in 1962, the same year Wong Kar-wai's 'In the Mood for Love' commences. Both films look wonderful, but while Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung's relationship in the latter is close but never consummated, that between Okada and Nagato continues to be physical yet rashly one-sided, with consequences as devastating as they are foreseeable to anyone except Nagato.