Cafe Lumiere (DVD)
APPROX. 104 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2003 - MPA RATING: NR
" Ozu was the master of small touches such as these and Hou packs his film with plenty of his own.
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Not a lot happens in "Café Lumière." Yoko is researching the life of a famous musician: she spends most of her time sitting in cafés, riding trains or rummaging around bookshops. Yoko´s revelation of her pregnancy is the only conflict in the story and it is never resolved. The real pleasure in a film like this is simply to spend time with the characters, to live alongside them for a little while and pick up little clues about them along the way. These clues are just as likely to be contained in gestures or their personal belongings as in dialogue, and modest scenes can speak volumes. In one quiet scene, Yoko´s father, obviously on his way home from work, waits for her to arrive at the train station. He stands by his car and scans the crowd intently until he finally spots her: he takes her luggage from and leads her to the car. He obviously cherishes his daughter. In a later scene, Yoko´s parents visit her apartment. When her father asks for sake, she has to ask a neighbor to borrow some. Yoko thinks nothing of this request, but her mother is mortified: that generation gap again. Ozu was the master of small touches such as these and Hou packs his film with plenty of his own.
With its long takes and dedramatized plot, "Café Lumière" requires patience and attention, both of which will be richly rewarded by this warm, lyrical film that is both homage to Ozu and uniquely Hou. You don´t have to know Ozu to appreciate this film.
Video
The film is presented in anamorphic 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The colors are sharper and brighter than on many other Wellspring transfers though the image quality can only be described as average. A few scenes look a bit soft but overall it´s an acceptable transfer.
Audio
The DVD is presented in Dolby Digital Stereo. Optional English subtitles support the audio which is in Japanese.
Extras
The DVD includes interview with: actress Yo Hitoto (9min.), actor Tadanobu Asano (9 min.) and director Hou (8 min.)
The most significant extra is a long video documentary (59 min.) called "Metro Lumière." Narrated with the kind of breathless hyperbole that only the French are allowed to get away with, the documentary compares the work of both Ozu and Hou. This is the first chance I´ve had to listen to Hou speak at length and he´s a fascinating man. There´s a surprising amount of substance to this documentary.
Closing Thoughts
For about six months in 2004, I couldn´t pick up an issue of Film Comment or Cineaste without reading an article by a critic bemoaning the fact that "Café Lumière" didn´t get an American distributor. Some writers even called it the greatest undistributed film in years. Since then I´ve been eager to see it: it was worth the wait. In the battle of contemporary Taiwan auteurs, I have always favored Tsai over Hou (though I like both quite a bit), but this is easily the most impressive, engaging Hou film I have seen to date.
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