If films had temperatures, this one would have the piercing chill of its winter landscape, yet burn with an interior sensuality. Toyoda's adaptation of the Kawabata novel is set in a mountain hot spring in northern Japan, seemingly far away from the Depression and impending war. 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. The artist cannot hold on to love and becomes a chimera while her life steadily deteriorates. This painful central relationship is played out against the bustle of the snow-country denizens and their attendant melodramas. But by using the exquisite snowy exteriors as a foil, Toyoda does justice to the novel's dark sensuality and preoccupation with death. Keiko Kishi as the geisha and Ryo Ikebe as her lover reflect, more than exhibit, emotion, much as the shoulder-deep snow, with its beautiful threatening formations, reflects the story's deep melancholy.