Former actress Midori Kurisaki, in her directorial debut, teamed with the great cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa to translate the bunraku puppet drama into cinematic terms while maintaining the classic form; the results are stunningly beautiful. Chikamatsu's oft-played doll drama tells of the courtesan Ohatsu and her lover, Tokubei, a soy-sauce merchant whose fortunes have gone awry through the perfidy of a trusted associate. For Tokubei, suicide is the only honorable act left; for Ohatsu, it is the only emotionally viable one. At dawn, in the forest of Sonezaki, the two end their short and sorrowful lives. Set not on a stage but in natural locations-in the streets of Kyoto and nearby forests-the film has an uncanny feel of reality in miniature, as the approximately half life-sized dolls are moved about by black-clad puppet masters. Miyagawa's camera, traveling gracefully through this setting, is sensitive to the extraordinary skill of the classically trained puppet masters (one of whom, Tamao Yoshida, was made a Living National Treasure by the Japanese government); with the subtlest of movements, they endow the dolls with inner life, and grief that is more than human. Also perfectly captured are the inflections of Japan's greatest gidayu chanters, who fuse dialogue and commentary into something totally other, at once music and poetry. The film's central sequence is haunting, set in Kyoto's pleasure district, where "men are blown as by winds of love down river...red lights guiding them through the darkness of mundane passion." In a brothel the lovers await their fate, Ohatsu, casually smoking, hiding Tokubei under her kimono and trying "to counsel and calm" him-with her foot.