Due to a shipment problem, we were unable to present this film as originally scheduled on May 18, during our Celebration of Japanese Cinema. The novel Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata, set in a mountain hotspring in northern Japan, is at once sensual and chilling, and Toyoda's adaptation captures all its brilliant misery. 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.