Love Letter

Synopsis

One day, I suddenly discovered the sweetness of desire. “A woman’s body becomes an erogenous zone from her feet to the top of her head.” This film is based on a love letter written by the free-spirited poet Kinko Mitsuharu to his mistress, depicting the trajectory of love and desire between a man and woman with an age difference of over 30 years. It became a major hit that attracted female audiences.

Poet Oda Toshiharu has been visiting Yuko’s home for six years now. They call each other “Toshi-nii” and “Usagi,” but his visits have no fixed schedule. When Yuko’s loneliness reaches its peak, he suddenly appears. Toshiharu shows tenderness by bathing the exhausted Yuko on spread vinyl sheets, yet he also displays eccentricity—even having her name tattooed on his lower body out of jealousy. Despite his selfish nature of constantly changing their marital status, Yuko accepts all his whims. However, after becoming pregnant with Toshiharu’s child only to abort it at his insistence, her mental state gradually deteriorates…

Yuko is portrayed by Sekine Keiko (now Takahashi Keiko), who exudes a unique transparency within her alluring sensuality. Under the direction of Toyo Higashi, a pioneer of women’s cinema, the work is refined into an emotionally rich masterpiece.