Café Lumière

C

Directed by Hou Hsiao Hsen

What went wrong here!?! The usually rock solid Hou Hsiao Hsen lays an egg in his homage to Ozu, a lumbering, aimless affair that tests the patience of the viewer to an uncomfortable degree. "Café Lumière" goes to show that just because a film looks like a sure thing on paper doesn't necessarily mean it will translate to anything memorable on film.

Yoko, a young women studying the life of Taiwanese composer Jiang Wen Ye, shocks her parents when she reveals that she is pregnant with the child of a man she does not intend to marry. Seeking some respite from the solitude she feels, Yoko befriends a local record store owner named Hajime (Tadanobu Asano) who quickly falls in love with her.

I'm not going to lie, folks--this is pretty much all that happens in the film. I'm sure a number of more learned viewers likely picked up on layers of symbolism and nuance that I, due to my unevolved grasp of the cinema, did not, but I must say that I'm almost completely convinced that there truly is nothing more going on in "Café Lumière" than what I just described. Depressing, I know.

Whereas many who watch "Café Lumière" will simply be unimpressed and maybe a bit annoyed at the time they wasted watching it, I was hugely disappointment for a few reasons. Firstly, this film had a number of elements going for it that outwardly would have suggested that I was in for a treat. A film directed by Hou as an homage to Ozu, starting Tadanobu Asano and featuring cinematography by the incomparable Lee Pin Bing should be a slam dunk. A slam dunk with AUTHORITY! Yet the sum of "Café Lumière's" parts far outshines the finished product, a meandering, boring, and emotionally vacuous snoozer that attempts to ape Ozu but mostly helps the viewer realize how much better Ozu himself would have probably done it if he were still alive. The main problem with "Café Lumière" is that Hou seems to mistake Ozu's meditative style as a greenlight to simply make a film where nothing happens as opposed to delighting in the nuance, small gestures, and unspoken words that made Ozu's films so gripping, even though sometimes nothing appeared to be happening in them. How Ozu's films continue to be classified as elelments in the "cinema of mundanity" is beyond me. Ozu's films may be quiet and appear to move at a slow pace but things are always happening in an Ozu film, even in his most light and anecdotal works. All of Ozu's films are indeed very plot driven which is more than I can say for Hou's film which doesn't seem to even contain a plot line, much less be driven by one.

The film is saved (at least for me) by the presence of long time Hou collaborator Lee Pin Bing as director of photography. Lee bathes the streets of Tokyo in a warm summer glow, making the sprawling urban behometh inviting and almost quaint. I only wish Lee would have been asked to use his amazing talents in service of a more worthy film.