. Ayako Wakao's vitality is truly the centerpiece of this film about the incarnations of a good-natured Tokyo prostitute. Self-awareness comes slowly to Koen, a war orphan, amid the hypocrisy that defines the prostitute's life in an era of anti-prostitution laws. "You don't mind, do you?" the geisha-house madame asks, as she sends Koen in to another "sweetheart." And she seems not to, which makes the evolution we witness all the more compelling. Kawashima consistently undercuts the melodrama, using fragmented framing often to humorous effect (as in a droll scene shot from behind a sushi bar). The dissonant music track (composed by Sei Ikeno for vibes and guitar) further puts a wedge between us and any pathos that Koen's tale might cast our way. At the same time, Kawashima offers a strange intimacy with the hermetic world of the brothel, and the Tokyo quarter whose sounds filter through paper walls to turn the box-like rooms of a geisha's world outside in. The nearby shrine to war heroes--which does not include Koen's family, who merely lost their lives in an air raid--is an ever-present reminder for whom the gong tolls. But between Kawashima's clandestine humor and Wakao's insistent, Anna Karina-like guilelessness (and guiltlessness), by film's end Koen has achieved something like a realistic self-image: she is a changing woman in a changing Japanese cinema.