The celebrated novel by Yasunari Kawabata, set in a mountain hotspring in the snow country of northern Japan, is at once sensual and chilling, and Toyoda's adaptation captures all its brilliant misery. Snow Country tells of a fading beauty, still a country girl at heart, who masks her love for a cynical young artist in the wiles and artifices of the geisha she has become. Using the exquisite snowy exteriors as a foil, Toyoda does justice to the novel's dark sensuality, and to Kawabata's preoccupation with suffering and death. The film marked the culmination of a brilliant young acting career for Keiko Kishi (who in 1983 came out of retirement to portray the eldest of Ichikawa's Makioka Sisters): her control reflects, rather than masks, the intensity of her emotions, much as the snow reflects the film's deep melancholy.