"One of Nobel-Prize winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata's best-known works adapted for the screen by Japan's most sensitive director of films on disintegrating male-female relationships. Set in the wealthy old seaside community of Kamakura where the novelist himself lived, the story focuses on a young wife whose husband has a mistress who bears his child. The wife responds by having an abortion of her own child and seeking her emotional support in life from her father-in-law. A subtle study of the inwardly-aimed aggressions that emerge in a society that does not view divorce as an option when a married couple feel trapped by each other. Setsuko Hara as the wife brilliantly portrays the other possibilities in a young woman's life so carefully omitted from her roles in Yasujiro Ozu's films." --Audie Bock