With Beauty and Sorrow 1965

An aging writer Ōki [Sô Yamamura] travels to Kyoto to reunite with his former lover Otoko [Kaoru Yachigusa], a reunion that dredges up a painful history. Fifteen years earlier, the married Ōki and the then-teenage Otoko carried on a dangerous affair. Otoko became pregnant by him, faced a miscarriage followed by a suicide attempt, and spent months in a mental hospital as her mother [Haruko Sugimura] urged Ōki to marry her. The episode would later fuel a novel Ōki wrote, which his grieving wife Fumiko [Misako Watanabe] typed up after learning of the infidelity from Otoko’s mother. The manuscript, titled The Bitter Seventeen, would unexpectedly become a bestseller, turning private wounds into public attention and altering the lives of everyone involved.

Otoko, now a painter and art teacher, lives with a young woman, Keiko [Mariko Kaga], who is both her pupil and life partner. Keiko, consumed by jealousy and the belief that Otoko never fully let go of Ōki, plots to avenge the past by targeting Ōki’s family. She spends the night with Ōki and later arranges to meet his son Taichiro [Kei Yamamoto], intending to unleash something devastating on the writer’s household. While Otoko rebukes Keiko for what she sees as egoistic manipulation, Fumiko grows wary and privately tells her husband that she suspects Keiko’s plans go beyond simple revenge.

The scheme escalates as Taichiro and Keiko spend an afternoon together in a hotel and then set off on a boating trip. The situation takes a troubling turn when Otoko is summoned to the hotel after Keiko barely survives the boating mishap, with Taichiro still missing. In a tense confrontation, Otoko, Ōki, and Fumiko gather by the unconscious Keiko, and Fumiko accuses Otoko of using Keiko to destroy their family. After Ōki helps remove Fumiko from the room, Keiko awakens, tears streaking down her cheeks, leaving the audience to question what was real, what was provoked, and what the future might hold for everyone involved.