Two bruised souls enact a tender, hesitant romance in Hiroshi Shimizu’s alternately poignant and playful wartime love story. A soldier (Chishu Ryu) is forced to prolong his stay at a rural spa when he accidentally cuts his foot on the titular object. Soon enough he tracks down its lovely owner (Kinuyo Tanaka) and finds himself smitten.
Slant Magazine says, "Through uncertainty and hardships, life finds meaning; this, above all, lies at the core of Shimizu's ravishing common-man cinema." FilmRef.com has some reflections. The NYT calls the closing scene "one of the most devastating moments in Japanese film." DVD Talk says it's an "affecting story about romance that "almost was"".
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Hulu won't let me watch it, but it sounded like a pretty decent film. Was it subtitled, I assume?
ReplyDeleteAh, they've put it back behind their paywall now. Bummer. But, yes, it had subtitles. It was a good story. I enjoyed the characters.
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