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Cafe Lumiere
This movie was made as an homage to Ozu. I thought the technical homages like the low camera, the framed shots, etc. were too obvious. I didn't think they were necessary, and in a film as quiet as this one, they almost shouted "Hey Ozu homage. Here!!!". I also thought the train shots were overdone, although the narrative sort of demanded them.
To me, the film came off as a sort of love letter to Japan from Taiwan, which is very interesting politically. Older Taiwanese grew up with lots and lots of Japanese culture, but not out of choice. What one sees of Tokyo here comes through a Taiwanese lens. It's much better than Wim Wenders' Tokyo-ga, which deals with Ozu in a typically Western way. (Werner Herzog is just ridiculous in that one.)
Like Ozu's movies, this one was full of nostalgia for a lost Japan. The characters in the film hang out in classic Tokyo cafes, the kind of place that has been done in by chain coffee shops. They read books and hang out in used-book stores. I loved this element of the film -- one of the locations was even a bookstore i used to frequent in Koenji. But Japanese publishing has been on a slide since the bubble burst. They ride the Arakawa-sen, the last surviving trolley line in Tokyo. The nostalgia element was greater here than in any of Ozu's films because there was a nostalgia for a certain sort of film-making & film-viewing that is not present at all in Ozu's movies because Ozu made most of his films during the golden years of Japanese cinema, before TV became popular. The heavy dose of nostalgia didn't really bother me because it was a nostalgia for a Japan that i really like, too.
Despite not liking him as a muscian or pop-cult figure, i really liked Asano Tadanobu in this one. He's under control here. I especially liked his voice.
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