Masato Hagiwara

  • Hsiao-Hsien Hou – Kôhî jikô AKA Café Lumière (2003)

    Drama2001-2010ArthouseHsiao-hsien HouJapan

    Shochiku Studio of Japan commissioned several directors to create films reflecting on the themes of Ozu Yasujiro on the centenary of the director’s birth. Here we find Inoue Yoko, an apparently single young woman who is pregnant, searching for a small cafe that was often visited by a Taiwanese composer whose life she is researching. She herself is back from Taiwan and receiving help from a book store clerk, but she first has to contend with the her own reality which includes her parents.Read More »

  • Toshihiro Tenma – Kyôso tanjô AKA Many Happy Returns (1993)

    1991-2000AsianComedyJapanToshihiro Tenma

    Quote:
    A young man, Kazuo, joins a new cult religion even though he sees through the initial recruitment pretense, and participating in the activities of a new social phenomenon, some of whose members genuinely believe in the principles and practice as preached, while others have more Machiavellian motives. (imdb)Read More »

  • Hsiao-Hsien Hou – Kôhî jikô AKA Café Lumière (2003)

    2001-2010DramaHsiao-hsien HouJapan

    Quote:
    Hou’s latest film continues in a similar vein Cafe Lumiereof hermetic environment and translucently slight narrative that have come to define his later, apolitical (and largely transitional) works (beginning with The Flowers of Shanghai). Opening with the reassuringly familiar sight of the Mount Fuji Shochiku logo that can be seen at the beginning of many of Yasujiro Ozu’s films as well as a train traversing a horizon demarcated by power lines at dusk, Café Lumière then sharply diverges from Ozu’s familiar camerawork and images of Japan in the film’s inherent asymmetry, aesthetically irregular compositions, awkward angles (during the parents’ visit in Yoko’s apartment, Hou seemingly attempts an Ozu-like low angle then, faced with a troublesome, truncated image of the stepmother standing in the foreground, inexplicably pans up to reveal her face before resuming the low angle), and opaque and unengaging characters (except for Yoko’s stepmother, played by Kimiko Yo). Read More »

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