Cape of North (1976)

Original title

北の岬

Directed by

Kei Kumai

Genre

drama film

Country

Japan

Runtime

1h 53m

Rating

9.0 of 10 from 1 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A Swiss religious missionary named Marie-Therese meets a Japanese engineer named Mitsuo on a ship from Marseille to Yokohama. They develop a relationship that faces obstacles due to their different backgrounds and her religious vows.

slow-burnmelancholiccontemplativeromanticrestrainedbittersweetdignifiedserious

What happens

Cape of the North (Japanese: 北の岬, Hepburn: Kita no misaki), also known as Le Cap du Nord, is a 1976 Japanese drama film directed by Kei Kumai. The film, based on a novel by Kunio Tsuji, deals with the relationship between rich countries and the Third World. In the center of the story, Marie-Therese (Claude Jade), a Swiss religious missionary, meets the Japanese engineer Mitsuo (Go Kato) aboard a ship connecting Marseille to Yokohama. Theirs is a story of impossible love. When French star Claude Jade arrived to play the role of the nun Marie-Therese, she was accompanied for the second part of shooting by her husband Bernard Coste. For journalists, it was agreed that officially he was the private secretary. Claude Jade said: I had to hide the existence of my husband and that I was pregnant [...] My pregnancy also prevents me from returning to Japan for the first release of the movie! Production is estimated that this condition is incompatible with the role of a nun, especially as the press believes me single. The film has yet to see an NTSC release, nor one with an English translation. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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