Critics reviews

All quibbles are forgiven with the celebrated final closeup of the stricken Reiko. With Ichiro Saito's remarkable score shifting mysteriously from full-on emotion to an oddly placid, melancholy distance, we see the anguish drain from Reiko's face a bit at a time, replaced by a joyless calm – and then a shock cut to "The End" as Saito's score goes ominously minor. The effect recalls the desolation of the ending of VERTIGO: Naruse gets to have his melodrama and undercut it too.