Tsuki wa noborinu

The coded telegrams with digits were cute:

3755: a number for a poem in the Manyoshu, by Lady Otomo of Sakanoue. "Her beauty radiates over mountains and rivers that separate and incapacitate."

The reply, 666: "Little time has passed since I last saw you, yet I only think of how much I adore you."

This is a romantic melodrama in the fashion of Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters, with a little dash of Maupassant via his novella Moonlight, said here to be the one where "strangers fall in love under the moon." Mostly it consists of a spunky young woman (Mie Kitahara) trying to maneuver her older sister (Yoko Sugi) into a relationship with a man, followed by her own little mini-drama with a family friend who could be more than that to her. It's a tad too prim and staid for my taste, with harmonious family interactions the general rule, complete with the gentle and beatific father straight out of Ozu (and played by Chishu Ryu no less). The tone is not something I'm not a big fan of, feeling too wholesome to the point of being saccharine, but it had its moments, all of which came from Mie Kitahara for me. I liked the visuals from Kinuyo Tanaka but not the slow pacing, and the script left me wanting a little sizzle.