After the death of her husband, a widow (Tanaka) with three children tries to manage her husband's dry-cleaning business. Told from the point of view of her eldest daughter, the film is an unabashedly sentimental hymn to maternal self-sacrifice and dedication, yet a certain edge becomes evident as Tanaka's self-deprecation takes on an unsettling, obsessive quality. A perennial Japanese favorite, Mother is, for Naruse, an uncharacteristically humorous film.