A love triangle plays out in the snow in Yoshida’s 11th feature, a striking deconstruction of the melodrama. Yuriko (Mariko Okada) and a high school teacher, who’s also her lover, head out on vacation and arrive at a mountain resort, where Yuriko intends to end things between them. Circumstances lead her to contact an old boyfriend (Isao Kimura), and their reconnection heightens the emotional volatility of this already fraught trip. Reducing the cinematic melodrama to its essential elements and situating it among visually ravishing, snowy landscapes, Yoshida arrives at an engrossing meditation on the plight of the human heart that is quintessentially his. Print courtesy of the National Film Archive of Japan.