A transitional work but still Illuminating

Chang Chen and Shu Qi in Three Times (2005)

Michiko Hada, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, and Michelle Reis in Flowers of Shanghai (1998)

Shiang-chyi Chen and Kang-sheng Lee in What Time Is It There? (2001)

Tadanobu Asano and Yo Hitoto in Café Lumière (2003)

Nenji Kobayashi, Kimiko Yo, and Yo Hitoto in Café Lumière (2003)

Yo Hitoto

Tadanobu Asano

Masato Hagiwara

Hsiao-Hsien Hou

T&apos;ien-wen Chu

The story revolves around Yoko Inoue, a pregnant woman in search of a cafe that was frequented by a Taiwanese composer whose life she is researching.

Kôhî jikô

art film devoid of life

A Japanese movie with a French title, &quot;Café Lumiere&quot; is a desultory tale of a young pregnant woman and her friendship with a local bookstore proprietor. As the movie is almost militantly anti-narrative in its stance, there really isn&apos;t much more one can provide in the way of helpful plot summary than that.

Director Hsiao-hsien Hou has opted for a Spartan style of film-making that hearkens back to such early Japanese masters as Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi. Each scene consists of a single medium or long shot with no close-ups or edits whatsoever. The result is that we become so detached from the characters on screen that we find ourselves unengaged in their problems and their fates. And this turns out to be a particularly serious problem in this case because the spare screenplay offers us so little of interest to start with. The story consists mainly of Yoko wandering around the city or moping in her apartment as she goes about the tasks of her daily life. She rides on trains, entertains her visiting parents, spends infrequent moments with her storeowner friend - and that&apos;s about it: no revelatory conversations, no insights into character, no point or purpose beyond the prosaic surface. Admittedly, some of the compositions are stunning and the style is intriguing and hypnotic at first, but it soon loses its charm as the tedium of the narrative (or non-narrative) takes over.

The acting is consistently understated and naturalistic, but in a movie in which everybody just looks preoccupied and pensive, there really isn&apos;t much call for anything else.

A Japanese movie with a French title, "Café Lumiere" is a desultory tale of a young pregnant woman and her friendship with a local bookstore proprietor. As the movie is almost militantly anti-narrative in its stance, there really isn't much more one can provide in the way of helpful plot summary than that.

Director Hsiao-hsien Hou has opted for a Spartan style of film-making that hearkens back to such early Japanese masters as Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi. Each scene consists of a single medium or long shot with no close-ups or edits whatsoever. The result is that we become so detached from the characters on screen that we find ourselves unengaged in their problems and their fates. And this turns out to be a particularly serious problem in this case because the spare screenplay offers us so little of interest to start with. The story consists mainly of Yoko wandering around the city or moping in her apartment as she goes about the tasks of her daily life. She rides on trains, entertains her visiting parents, spends infrequent moments with her storeowner friend - and that's about it: no revelatory conversations, no insights into character, no point or purpose beyond the prosaic surface. Admittedly, some of the compositions are stunning and the style is intriguing and hypnotic at first, but it soon loses its charm as the tedium of the narrative (or non-narrative) takes over.

The acting is consistently understated and naturalistic, but in a movie in which everybody just looks preoccupied and pensive, there really isn't much call for anything else.

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Kôhî jikô

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