I can understand the love for this film by Hirokazu Kore-eda, because it intersects fairly straightforwardly with love for Yasujiro Ozu. I suppose there’s always been a certain debt in Kore-eda’s filmmaking to the master but it’s clearest here, in a story of adult children (and their children) gathering at their elderly parents’ home for possibly the last time. There’s that elegiac sense of time and a generation passing, wrapped up in (misremembered) memories and advice and, of course, cooking. The whole first few scenes are just taken up with recipes being prepared, and there’s that gentleness of Ozu in the repeated (titular) motif of the parents walking around their neighbourhood, just gently moving about. Over the course of the film, we get a pretty great sense of what motivates them, the petty resentments they still hold onto with respect chiefly to their youngest son, how he couldn’t be like his (now deceased) older brother, and his poor choice of marriage — though in that respect at least there’s a little softening over the film’s course, which sticks to a day-long timeframe. There’s just a lot of sweetness here, tinged with melancholy at times, but what family gathering isn’t.
FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director/Writer Hirokazu Kore-eda 是枝裕和; Cinematographer Yutaka Yamasaki 山崎裕; Starring Hiroshi Abe 阿部寛, Yui Natsukawa 夏川結衣, Kirin Kiki 樹木希林, Yoshio Harada 原田芳雄; Length 114 minutes.
Seen at home (Blu-ray), Wellington, Sunday 17 July 2022.
filmcentric 