To Japan and back for eggs

The movie's tiny dramatic kernel involves Herve's wordless one-time liaison with Hara Jubei's beautiful concubine, which leaves him feeling obsessed and guilty. If the movie's twist ending, involving the translation of two letters from Japanese into French, is worthy of Maupassant, it is so long in arriving that the closest thing to a catharsis it offers is a sense of relief that something finally happened.