Romantic love story of Russian physician Gusev and Japanese woman Keiko takes place in time of fighting of Russian and Japanese scientists against poliomyelitis epidemic broken out in Japan in 1959.
Direction
Mitta balances intimate romance with sprawling epidemic chaos.
Acting
Filatov and Kurihara communicate entire dialogues through eye contact.
Production
Soviet-Japanese co-production tension bleeds into every frame.
Director
Aleksandr Mitta
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot during perestroika, this was the first Soviet-Japanese co-production since WWII—literal Cold War diplomacy on screen.
Komaki Kurihara learned Russian phonetically; her raw pronunciation supposedly made her performance more authentically strained.
SU
