Kaneto Shindo's last film, made at the tender age of eighty-two, was this autumnal, deeply idiosyncratic embrace of life, aging, and the eternal artistic process. Amidst the rustling white birch trees and sun-dappled stony brooks of mountainous northern Japan, an elderly theater actress rests at her villa, kept company by a housekeeper and soon joined by two unexpected visitors: a now-senile fellow actress and her devoted husband. Chekhov recitals, long dinners, and forest walks occupy their time (as does a comical interlude featuring an escaped convict), but the true concerns linger like the late-summer sun: aging, and how to live in the face of dying. There's no easy sentimentality here: Shindo's elderly characters embrace their future with a dignity as graceful as the nature around them. This dignity becomes even more moving when one discovers that Otowa, Shindo's longtime wife, actress, and collaborator, was herself dying of cancer during the shoot; she passed away soon after it was finished.