The Sea Is Watching

An exquisite period film from a script Akira Kurosawa did not live to direct. It has a softer edge than the master probably would have delivered, but it is deeply affecting.

An absorbing slice of a lost world that's actually very reminiscent of Kurosawa's underappreciated 1957 film, "The Lower Depths."

Fortunately, Mr. Kumai, who himself has shown no aversion to baroque melodrama, leans here toward a plain and direct style that is tasteful and intelligent, a boon, given the predictability of the story. He understands the difference between pitiable and pitiful.

The banal score seems more appropriate for a western, and there's a certain self-conscious theatricality in the mise en scene, yet this is both handsome and affecting.

An unusually cheerful depiction of prostitution. You've never seen such wholesome hookers.

Despite a hopelessly corny score, the movie is redeemed by a goofily touching final scene.

Though The Sea (and the sea) wants to capture some elemental, unruly truths, it's ultimately an over-lacquered jidai-geki curio, something for the appendix of the next book on Kurosawa.