Café Lumière / Kôhî jikô (Hau Hsiao-hsien, 2003)

[Michael Kerpan]

Interesting list, artfilmfan but....

A number of the things you list also have analogs in Ozu's work. Ozu has a wide array of train scenes of almost every sort. He also has a variety of tombstone scenes (can't recall the trees in these, though). The white blouse and dark skirt occurs frequently in Ozu's films -- even if this is not often seen on the streets of Tokyo today.

Maybe you should try sitting closer to your TV screen (like I do). Then you'd have no problem seeing the lovely actress's face. ;~}

[artfilmfan]

A number of the things you list also have analogs in Ozu's work. Ozu has a wide array of train scenes of almost every sort.

But in all of the films in the 4 Shochiku boxsets that I've seen, there are no train scenes similar to the ones that I described. I've never seen a shot of a train crossing a small bridge in the countryside, with a body of water in the foreground. In "Summer at Grandpa's", the body of water is a stream; in "Cafe Lumiere", the body of water is a pond. In both films, the trains travel from the left to the right side of the screen. I think a landscape like this (a small bridge over a stream in the farm/countryside) is rare in Japan.

It's the same case with the camera looking ahead of the train. I've never seen such a shot in any of Ozu's films. Ozu's films have train scenes with the camera looking in the forward direction, but the camera is never mounted inside a train (in the front) and looks ahead. (In "Late Spring", for example, the camera looks in the forward direction, but it's mounted to the side of the train).

He also has a variety of tombstone scenes (can't recall the trees in these, though).

Of course you can't recall tombstone scenes with trees in Ozu's films. There aren't any. Yes, Ozu's films has tombstone scenes ("Floating Weeds", "End of Summer", "Tokyo Story") but it's the shot of a big tree in a farmland that we're talking about here. And the tombstones under the tree or the religious shrine under the tree is just another link between "Cafe Lumiere" and HHH's previous work.

I don't know if I should mention this, because it weakens the point that I'm trying to make. The only "big-tree" scene in an Ozu film that I can think of is in

Spoiler

"Story of Floating Weeds" where the girl was waiting to seduce the boy. There are some kind of small flags under the tree.

The white blouse and dark skirt occurs frequently in Ozu's films -- even if this is not often seen on the streets of Tokyo today.

I'm not talking about "dark skirt". I'm talking about "black skirt". There is a difference. "Dark" could be "navy blue" which is very popular in Japan or grey. It's the black skirt and plain white blouse combination that is rare in Japan. I've been to Japan's big cities, small cities, even a fishing village like the one in "Maboroshi". I once spent the whole afternoon in Shibuya just watching people and never saw people wearing that attire. And Shibuya is a place that is crowded with people, especially at the big intersection that is similar to the one at Time Square in NYC.

Maybe you should try sitting closer to your TV screen (like I do). Then you'd have no problem seeing the lovely actress's face.

Or buy a bigger TV Except with a split second in one scene, did you have a good frontal view of the actress's face in this film? HHH always filmed her from the back or the side (of her face), but not the front. Look at the screen captures posted at DVDBeaver, it's the side of her face that was filmed, not the front.

And by the way, here are a couple of things that HHH has said about "Cafe Lumiere" (not these exact words, of course). I can't remember where I've read or heard about them, maybe in my dreams:

1. That he tried to imagine how Ozu would shoot a film in modern-day Japan when he was shooting "Cafe Lumiere". (Yeah, right, to think that the Master would shoot a film in modern-day Japan to look and feel like a HHH film? Never!)

2. That he was making a "Japanese film". Hahaha. I don't think so.

I can imagine a scenario in which, after watching a pre-release private screening of "Cafe Lumiere", the Shochiku executives, with a dazed and confused look on their faces, huddled in a corner of the theater and asked each other this question: "what was that?"

[leo goldsmith]

But in all of the films in the 4 Shochiku boxsets that I've seen, there are no train scenes similar to the ones that I described. I've never seen a shot of a train crossing a small bridge in the countryside, with a body of water in the foreground....

It's the same case with the camera looking ahead of the train. I've never seen such a shot in any of Ozu's films....

Of course you can't recall tombstone scenes with trees in Ozu's films. There aren't any.... And the tombstones under the tree or the religious shrine under the tree is just another link between "Cafe Lumiere" and HHH's previous work....

(Yeah, right, to think that the Master would shoot a film in modern-day Japan to look and feel like a HHH film? Never!)

I'm sorry. Who cares? Ozu didn't direct the film; Hou did. If you're interested in auteurist specificity, wouldn't it be better to look at this in terms of Hou's work? We've already discussed how it's unreasonable to think that Hou would make any kind of simple tribute to Ozu, and I've already mentioned that I think this film is most interesting in this regard for the ways in which it illuminates the differences in the two directors' styles. Quibbling about the color of women's skirts is a pretty extreme and nitpicking way of criticizing the film.

Having said that, this woman has just returned from an extended trip to Taiwan. Maybe she picked up that style of dress over there?

Or maybe it's a movie.

[iangj]

Apparently, in the '80s, package tours were set up for Japanese tourists who wanted to visit the places in Hou's early films.

Don't know about this, but Chiufen, where City of Sadness (at the very end of the eighties) was shot, subsequently became a prime tourist spot, popular especially with Hong Kong tour groups.

Has anyone seen the Sinomovie DVD? The screen captures on DVDBeaver look incredibly dark, very far from the look of seeing Cafe Lumiere in the cinema (which I did, three times),

[artfilmfan]

[I'm sorry. Who cares? Ozu didn't direct the film; Hou did. If you're interested in auteurist specificity, wouldn't it be better to look at this in terms of Hou's work? We've already discussed how it's unreasonable to think that Hou would make any kind of simple tribute to Ozu, and I've already mentioned that I think this film is most interesting in this regard for the ways in which it illuminates the differences in the two directors' styles. Quibbling about the color of women's skirts is a pretty extreme and nitpicking way of criticizing the film.

Then Hou should not have stated that he was trying to "imagine how Ozu would shoot a film about a modern-day Japan" (or was it "Tokyo"?) when he was making this film.

You may see the color of a woman's skirt simply just that: a color. I see it differently. I see it in terms of national and cultural identities (that women don't usually wear white blouse and black skirt in Japan is a unique thing among the Asian countries) and a fashion statement. That's what makes watching foreign-language films or visiting foreign countries interesting to me.

[ToKem]

Very interesting to see the question of an Ozu tribute discussed, particularly when it concerns ‘Cafe Lumiere'. This film also made me think about what exactly it is that is so typical and unique about Ozu's films and what a tribute should or could be like. ‘Cafe Lumiere' often gives me the impression of seeing the world in and Ozu-like way. This is exactly why I have no problem with considering the film as a tribute to Ozu (despite the differences between both directors). The film goes so much deeper than recapturing certain stylistic aspects or certain themes familiar of Ozu, but through of all of that is succeeds in bringing about a unified view on reality in which both people and objects, both emotional and natural movement, are brought together, just like Ozu's work does. It might be true that this is what every film does, but I feel that most films do so only to a certain (=minimal) extent, that only few filmmakers have dedicated themselves to exhibiting this kind of harmony in full. After having seen more of his films, I now know that HHH has been doing this for years in his own unique way and that ‘Cafe Lumiere' is just as much a HHH-film as an Ozu tribute. I would love to see more Ozu tributes.

[Michael Kerpan]

Welcome -- and thanks for the nice introductory post on one of my favorite recent films.

I think HHH is most similar to Ozu here in that he does not push us towards any specific evaluation of the characters and their acts -- but simply lets us see a bit of their lives (at a crucial moment for one of them) and reflect on what we see.

[ToKem]

Thank you. I agree with your remark. Both directors simply let us see and give us the opportunity to reflect. I would argue though that what we see is not only life as it is lived but also life ‘as such' (obviously without giving up the specificity of events, persons and objects). More and more do I recognize that great films both illuminate something about life and enable us to see certain general structures of the world. Film shows us ‘the bigger picture' of things. Ozu is a master at it. It's a pity you don't hear the term ‘mise-en-scene' much anymore.

[John Cope]

Forgive me if I've missed this point of discussion but I was interested in hearing from those with the Japanese or French DVD concerning the deleted scene. I only just recently discovered that it's apparently quite a deleted scene (at approximately 30 minutes!) and acts as a kind of extended epilogue to the film. I've been told it's quite strong as a work unto itself and that, in fact, one of the locations credited at the end of the feature as it presently stands is a location only seen in this deleted material. I would love to see this and can't imagine why in the world it hasn't been ported over to the DVDs with English subs. I may have to spring for one of these other editions just for this.

[Ornette]

To my surprise the Panorama edition of this film is both anamorphic and progressive and has a healthy bitrate around 6-8 mb/s. The subs are white/gray and has a very pleasant font. Audio is DD 2.0 and DD 5.1. For those who need English subs this seems to be the best edition as of now. Even though this is definitely good enough for me, it'd still be interesting to compare it to the Japanese Shochiku. Some screencaps here.

I picked it up for $7,69 (+postage) over at DDDHouse, which I can heartily recommend.