If films had temperatures, this one would have the piercing chill of its winter landscape, yet burn with the heat of its characters' emotions. Toyoda's adaptation of the novel by Kawabata is set in a mountain hot spring in northern Japan; it 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 brilliant actress Keiko Kishi's control reflects the intensity of her emotions, much as the snow reflects the film's deep melancholy.