This hypnotic and extraordinarily beautiful film weds French surrealism to Japanese ghost-story (with a bit of German expressionism thrown in to make it a ménage à trois.) Set in the late 1920s-a pre-war period of changing mores in Japan roughly paralleling that of Weimar Germany-the story actually involves a ménage à cinq. Aochi (Toshiya Fujita), a Japanese professor of German on vacation in a seaside resort, encounters an old university acquaintance, Nakazato (Yoshio Harada), now leading a wild, nomadic life. Over the next few months, Aochi is drawn into a bizarre sexual pentangle involving a geisha, Koine; Nakazato's wife Sono, who resembles Koine exactly (both are played by Naoko Otani); and Aochi's own wife. Denizens of the supernatural appear to roam comfortably in Nakazato's free-spirited universe, and even the resolutely modern professor finds himself troubled by irrational fears in his presence. The title of the film refers to Pablo de Sarasate's "gypsy violin" composition-a piece of music which Japanese children learn in school, and which haunts this film both as an element of the story and as its score.