One of the most popular and critically successful Japanese films of recent years, Orin (alternate English titles: Banished and Melody In Gray) has been praised by Kevin Thomas as “a romantic tragedy of the utmost beauty and emotional impact.

“As in Double Suicide, his best-known film in America, Shinoda tells of star-crossed lovers whose defiance of society exacts the highest possible toll. If anything, however, Melody In Gray is even richer than Double Suicide,... an odyssey that allows Shinoda to revel in the glories of nature in a way that in its piercing beauty underlines society's cruel alienation from it.

“Once again, too, Shinoda's lovely and talented wife, Shima Awashita, stars. This time she plays a blind woman, Orin, who is abandoned at the age of 6 in her native coastal village in southern Japan and is taken in by a band of blind female samisen players.”