Café Lumière

Kôhî jikô
a film by Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou's centenary tribute to Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu, echoing many of Ozu's recurring themes – the breakdown of communication between parents and children, the rhythmic patterning of everyday life. The film paints a compelling and insightful portrait of contemporary Japan, focusing on the travails of Yoko Inoue, an independent young woman researching a project on the composer Jiang Wen-Ye. Born in Taiwan with Japanese nationality, Jiang was the talk of the 1930s and 1940s music world in Japan.

Yoko, a freelance writer becomes friends with Hajime, the proprietor of a secondhand bookshop, and the two spend a great deal of time together in coffee shops. Yoko was raised in the rural town of Yubari by her sight-impaired uncle, but has since created a good relationship with her father and step-mother. One day Yoko tells her parents that she is pregnant. The father of the child is a former boyfriend from Taiwan. Her parents worry for Yoko's future and her choice to become an unmarried mother. Yoko is a young woman who makes her way through life almost casually, not letting anything get her too upset or too excited. But now she must deal with both the concerns of her parents and the pressures and contradictions of her modern life.

As the original title Kôhî jikô suggests a feeling of "settling the spirit and facing the realities of one's life", so the film portrays the moments where Yoko and Hajime are about to restart their own lives. Although he cannot articulate his feelings, Hajime is filled with love for Yoko. In her daily life Yoko comes to re-evaluate her view of her family, Hajime, and the new life growing inside her.

Deftly drawing on the recurring Ozu theme of the relationship between ageing parents and their growing, increasingly independent child, the story plays out slowly, portraying real life with little artifice whilst evincing other things the eye cannot see. Hou reveals so much of the human heart through his quiet, unhurried style and his acute attention to the minutiae of life. Beautifully performed, with long, well-framed shots featuring natural sound and lighting, and incorporating one of Jiang's piano scores, Café Lumière is a gently compelling tale about everyday characters doing everyday things, expressed as pure cinematic poetry.