I don't know if the changes were choices made by Shinoda, or were mandated by the production company, but a certain timidity to several aspects of Kawabata's novel are evident. Oki's novel, titled "A Girl of Sixteen" by Kawabata, is retitled "Bitter Seventeen" in the film. Not only does this show a problem with dealing with the age of a fictional character, but the novel's title change gives an unneeded and unwanted emotion charge to the past events. Keiko is referred to in the film as one of Okoto's pupils, further lessening the relationship between the two women. What little physical contact in shown on screen consists of a hand slipping into a kimono, and a kiss barely seen in the dark. A scene with the two women sharing a bath coyly reveals Okoto's bare shoulders above the water, and the glimpse of a woman's foot. Even Keiko's declarations that she hates men comes across more as the whine of a girl who has had too many bad dates, then the young woman who understood her sexual preferences at an early age. It may be worth noting also that the sado-masochistic elements of the novel remain relatively intact.

One of the themes of the novel is the use of one's life as source material for creating art. Oki is most famous for his novel based on his relationship with Okoto. Okoto is in the process of creating a painting titled "Ascension of the Child", the child being Okoto's as he is imagined. While the film bypasses the novel's discussion of Oki's thoughts on literature, the choices made on the paintings by the two women raises questions. Rather than showing any of Keiko's paintings, they are discussed by the characters in the film, but unseen by the audience. Unlike in Jacques Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse which uses the unseen painting for dramatic purpose, Shinoda's choice of not showing Keiko's paintings does not work, even though it should be understood that any painting would probably not live up to the expectations of those who read the novel. Okoto's one painting seen in the film is more abstract than the work described by Kawabata. There are a couple of shots of Okoto and her painting that anticipate what would be done to better effect in Double Suicide.

Shinoda's film has, unsurprisingly, some beautiful imagery of its own. There is also the interesting device in the use of screens or passageways, allowing for some of the action to be only partially seen, or only heard. The film was released just a year after the publication of the novel. That was certainly done to capitalize on Kawabata's popularity in Japan in general and on the freshness of the novel. One can only guess as to whether a better film might have been made a few years later when there was more frankness to Japanese film, both with mainstream product, and the advent of the "Pink film", or if Shinoda was the best person to film this novel.

Might With Beauty and Sorrow been a better film had Shinoda been willing, or able, to have made something as avant-garde as Toru Takamitsu's score? Considering that Kawabata wrote the story and screenplay for Teinosuke Kinugasa's A Page of Madness, I think Shinoda might have done better to have given sway to madness, seeking the visual equivalent to Kawabata as the younger artist, rather than the revered master he had become.