A trio of Japan's finest actresses--Kinuyo Tanaka, Isuzu Yamada and Hideko Takamine--are featured in this revealing picture of traditional geishas in the mid-1950s facing the decline of their way of life and the spectre of prostitution. Through the eyes of a loyal, elderly maid (Tanaka) who is possibly the only one in the establishment to fully comprehend the situation, Naruse charts the machinations of Tsutayakko (Yamada), the proud mistress of the house, as she goes about trying to save it from becoming either a restaurant or a brothel--all the while denying, as she plays her samisen, that the end is at hand. Based on the book by Aya Koda, whose episodic narrative style is ideally suited to Naruse's plotless, anti-melodramatic approach (for Naruse, as Audie Bock notes, “life rarely grants great happiness or great sorrow”), Flowing creates a marvelous atmosphere of togetherness among these women all living under one roof. But, as in Late Chrysanthemums (May 8), camaraderie quietly gives way to the existential reality that, in the end, each will be alone.