Here's to the Young Lady

Director Keisuke Kinoshita delicately balances humor and melodrama in this gentle romantic comedy. Class tensions threaten to derail a budding romance when a young woman (the luminous Setsuko Hara) from a wealthy, established family that has fallen on hard times seeks out the newly successful, self-made owner (Shuji Sano) of a Tokyo car shop for a husband. She likes ballet; he likes boxing—can these would-be lovers see past their very different upbringings amid the rapidly changing social landscape of postwar Japan?