Hideo, a young student, disappoints his physician father when he shows more interest in literature and love than he does in medicine. Meanwhile, as the relationship between father and son disintegrates, the doctor's daughter becomes entangled in her own love affair. “The presence of the star Yoshika Okada (herself the daughter of a very prominent Kyushu medical family) transformed the film,” notes David Owens (Japan Society). John Gillett (British Film Institute) writes, “Gosho's technique of breaking down his material into hundreds of short shots in order to build up a dense narrative texture is well displayed in L'Amour...a sensitive, occasionally sentimentalized love story...which, judging by the abundance of intertitles, may once have been envisaged as a sound film. Gosho's gentle tone and meticulous direction of actors turn it into an engrossing ‘silent play of faces'.”