Generally considered to be Ozu's bleakest film which is, perhaps, why it's often placed behind "Tokyo Story" and "Late Spring", funnier and gentler if not less powerful works , in this director's canon. I would agree with this assessment and ranking although it's a bit like saying "The Possessed" is Doestoevsky's third best novel. I mean it's still a shattering experience that stays with you long after you've finished it and demands to be re-visited. I would especially like again to view the character of the loving but strangely passive mom who walks out on her marriage and kids but wants and expects immediate forgiveness from her children. Ozu and his co scenarist Kogo Noda's treatment of her is amazingly good, bringing out both the monstrousness and humanity of this person so that you are both appalled by and sympathetic toward her. And the downward spiral of Akiko, which in the hands of a lesser director would descend the tear jerking path, is looked at with compassion tempered with a rather cold eyed realism in the scenes at the police station and the abortion clinic. And Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, re-enacting the father/daughter relationship of "Late Spring" but with the interesting difference that Hara's character is married but separated, meet on a more equal plane of maturity, in my opinion, than in the earlier work that makes their scenes together fuller and less sentimental. So while your tear ducts are drier your mind is more engaged. And, come to think of it, maybe that's another reason why this film has been unjustly neglected, at least in the West. Give it an A.
