The Rendezvous

A long train journey to the north of Japan. A young man tries to get into conversation with an older woman sitting across from him. At first she does not answer; the talk starts when he shares his lunch. She is on her way to her mother’s grave, and a stern faced attendant is travelling with her. It emerges that the woman is serving a sentence for murder and is out on leave. The man is wanted on a charge of assault and robbery. Something forms between them over the course of the journey. She asks him to wait the two years until her sentence ends. Keiko Kishi and Kenichi Hagiwara take the leads in Koichi Saito’s Japanese film of 1972.