北の岬 (1976)

Based on a novel by Kunio Tsuji, the film explores the relationship between rich countries and those of the Third World. At its center is Marie-Thérèse, a Swiss missionary nun who meets a Japanese engineer aboard a ship traveling from Marseille to Yokohama. It is the story of an impossible love. In 1971, the young nun Marie-Thérèse (Claude Jade) travels from Switzerland to Marseille, where she boards a ship bound for Yokohama. The Japanese engineer Mitsuo Ono (Go Kato) is also on board. He has worked in the automobile industry in West Germany and received neurological treatment after a car accident. Ono is fascinated by Marie-Thérèse, whose mission is to visit the various stations belonging to her order. She visits nuns in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Casablanca; Conakry; Dhakar; and Cape Town. An exhausted elderly nun stabs herself in the knee with a fruit knife. Marie-Thérèse campaigns against hunger, plague, and oppression. Ono is now deeply in love with her. When he arrives in Yokohama, he meets his former lover, Naoko (Tomoko Ogawa), to tell her that he loves Marie-Thérèse. He goes to see Marie-Thérèse in Tokyo, but she has already left for Hokkaido. Ono goes there, and the lovers meet at Cape North in Hokkaido. They kiss, but Marie-Thérèse feels that her work is more important and gives up her love for Ono: “I love you too. This is the only love I have. That is why I now see it as a test. No matter how much I love you. It is unforgivable. Someone has to go to places of poverty and war to prove that the fullness of the human soul is not sustained by what is visible or material alone.” Marie-Thérèse leaves for Bangladesh, where the war of independence is beginning...