A profoundly moving study of loneliness and changing postwar values, the film is an adaptation of one of the best-loved novels of Nobel Prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata. Hara plays a traditionally raised woman living with her in-laws and callous, philandering husband. Often alone, she develops a close and complex relationship with her father-in-law, through which she is able to cope with the indignities heaped upon her by her wayward husband. The film is one of Naruse's most cinematically understated works; complex emotions, dreams, and courses of action are expressed through the subtlest gestures and movements.