The Women in the Mirror

Yoshida’s return to form after a fifteen-year interval takes on the atomic bomb, which keeps haunting many Japanese lives to this very day. Three generations of women question their identity but, with Hiroshima's A-Bomb Dome in the background, have to admit that there can be no definitive answer to their query, due to the irrational character of the atomic bombing.
Although more conventional than his independent films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, all Yoshida’s style elements are conspicuously present in this strong late work by the almost 70-year-old director. The Women in the Mirror brought him to Cannes and sparked a reappraisal of his oeuvre in his homeland and in France. It also marked the renewal of his collaboration on screen with actress Okada Mariko after three decades.