12/17

Tale

Tatsuo and his daughter Haru run the Takano Tofu shop in Onomichi

When Tatsuo discovers he is ill, he worries that his daughter will be left alone, and unbeknownst to her, he sets out to find Haru a match. While the plot could (and has) filled quite a few family dramas, here, with the magnetism provided by the presence of veteran Tatsuya Fuji (In the Realm of the Senses), the…

Director-writer Mitsuhiro Mihara’s 2023 plaintive father-daughter drama is too straightforward to compare favorably to Yasujiro Ozu’s family drama classics

Read more. In a story centered on Tatsuo, an elderly tofu master in Onomichi, and his singularly devoted daughter Haru, Mihara is clearly channeling Ozu’s “Late Spring” and “Early Summer” styles to capture the specificity of their close relationship.

The clown moments felt like a different movie than intended

The plot moves along slowly as each finds potential companions, but not until a requisite number of comedy scenes with stock characters are played out quite broadly. Regardless, screen veteran Tatsuya Fuji plays Tatsuo with cantankerous enthusiasm, while Kumiko Aso provides attentive assistance as Haru.

For a film with similar sensibilities about the art behind uniquely Japanese food, I suggest watching Naomi Kawase’s 2015 “An (Sweet Bean)”

Fuji’s scenes with Kumi Nakamura as an ailing older woman were touching, though the atomic bomb tie-ins seemed contrived to cram more pathos into the film.