What at first purports to be a documentary on the missing person problem in overcrowded Japan develops into Imamura's most brilliant illustration of the absurdity of "objective cinema." Using only a small crew and no cast as such, Imamura follows up on one of hundreds of missing persons reports filed with the police. He interviews the missing man's family, employers, acquaintances, and his fiancée who has filed the report thinking that her own sister has murdered the man. The film takes on a surreal aspect when the fiancée loses interest in the murder and takes a strong liking to the interviewer himself. Using sync-sound and hidden camera techniques to blur fact and fiction filmmaking long before it was trendy to do so, Imamura effects the final breakdown of cinema verité in the film's audacious final sequence. "In a coup de cinéma equaled only by Kiarostami's Close-Up, Imamura transforms fact into artifice, being into acting, personal identity into a tenuous fabrication." (James Quandt)