Mizoguchi revisits the world of prostitutes in Kyoto in this late work. Kinuyo Tanaka stars as the madam of a brothel who finds herself competing with her daughter for the affections of a young doctor. Grappling with the suffering caused by conventional attitudes, the two women begin to form a new kind of bond. “The film has the feeling of late Ford or Buñuel, of a director who has rummaged through all the styles of expression and arrived at the most subtly exquisite, minimalist ways of expressing his deepest, most complex sentiments” (Andrew Sarris).