FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
Directed by: Hou Hsiao-hsien. Produced by: Liao Ching-Sung, Hideshi Miyajima, Fumiko Osaka, & Ichiro Yamamoto. Written by: Hou Hsiao-hsien & Chu T’ien-wen. Director of Photography: Lee Ping-Bing. Edited by: Liao Ching-sung. Released by: Wellspring. Language: Japanese with English subtitles. Country of Origin: Japan/Taiwan. 103 min. Not Rated. With: Yo Hitoto, Tadanobu Asano, Masato Hagiwara, Kimiko Yo & Nenji Kobayashi. DVD Features: Interviews with Yo Hitoto, Tadanobu Asano & Hou Hsiao-hsien. Métro Lumière documentary. Trailer.
Café Lumière is Taiwanese visionary Hou Hsiao-hsien`s homage to one of
Japan's most beloved masters, Yasujiro Ozu, on the centenary of his birth.
In this decidedly placid tale, Yoko (pop star Yo Hitoto), a young
freelance writer, returns from her trip to Taiwan pregnant. She reveals the news to her
loving, yet
painfully conservative parents and subsequently announces she has no
intentions of marrying the father. Yoko`s stoic independence keeps her
parents at bay, as she goes about her secluded life as if nothing has
changed. She spends her days searching all over Tokyo
for recordings of Jiang Wenye, an early-20th-century Taiwanese composer
who studied in Japan. Tagging along for the search is Hajime (Tadanobu
Asano), a used bookstore clerk secretly in love with Yoko.
From the opening shot of a streetcar to the low-angle shots into Yoko's
parents home, fans of Ozu will see shots and
hear dialogue lovingly extracted from Ozu's seminal film Tokyo Story. But
the calculated use of lighting and composition throughout the cityscapes is
entirely Hou's own. He especially manages to capture
amazingly complex and beautiful shots of the Tokyo metro. Whether Hou's
unconventional disregard for plot works well with Ozu`s subject of Japanese
domestic drama is debatable, however. At the irresolute conclusion,
fans of Ozu might miss the prescient message that the director had always
injected into his films. Hou, as well as first-time performer Hitoto and
Japanese art-house favorite Asano, succeed in capturing the feeling of
urban solitude in a naturalistic way that Ozu might have favored himself, but what Café Lumière ultimately lacks is the emotional resonance that Ozu would have
allowed his viewers to
take away from his film.
DVD Extra: For fans of Hou Hsiao-hsien, the DVD extras are a delectable
treat. Along with Yo Hitoto and Tadanobu Asano, Hou opens up in his
interview segment. The real find, though, is the Metro Lumière
documentary, which is almost an hour's worth of an in-depth interview with
the director. It explores Hou`s history, his rise as a
filmmaker, and most importantly, how he, a Taiwanese director, went about
making a film like Café Lumière, whose focus is so soulfully
Japanese. Marie Iida
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