Watch Café Lumière For Free

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Café Lumiere is a joyful slice, a little piece, which is both satisfying and leaves you wanting to move on to another day within the context of the movie. The story and characters are inconsequential, this is relayed through long shots, or entire scenes with the character's back facing the camera, or the mumbled dialog. What is relevant is the light, sound movement, ordinary experience of existence. Yasurjiro Ozu the brilliant director who managed to give a entire sensibility to the mundane and static pedestrian point of view, is present here, but the light and tone of this movie is all about everyday Japan and its timeless pace. The essence of this film is it's universality and regard for the human experience. It is brilliant and fantastic as a reflection of the world at large and as a microcosm.

It's official, folks -- Hou Hsiao-Hsien doesn't have a thought in his pretty little head. Are you wondering why he chose Shu Qi as his muse?Shu ( or is that Qi? ) doesn't appear in this one. Instead we get a snaggletoothed Yo Hitoto, apparently a pop star in Japan -- judging by her song at the end, she's a pop star just like the girl who serves you at Rockin' Curry is "a actriss" -- and a wasted Tadanobu Asano, typically an indicator of quality, who is required to do nothing here but stand around and look like a mumbling Asian hipster and is too old to manage even that. Hou's philosophy? Life is limbo, a big nothing, feel it and move on. I'd like to do that but Hou gives us nothing to feel in Cafe Lumiere beyond a bland photo essay of Life in Tokyo Circa 2003 and the flabbergasting observation that people are ships that pass in the night, no, make that trains that pass in the day, never connecting, each hurtling to its own destination, usually some variant of a dark tunnel or maybe a bridge if they're lucky. Yikes. Flowers of Shanghai is one of the most rarefied, technically accomplished and mesmerizing films of all time. How could the same director who created the opening shot of that film, which features about twelve actors conversing at machine-gun speed for about ten straight minutes -- an impossible directorial feat -- get trapped making this laconic sub-Jarmusch reality porn for two films in a row now? Millennium Mambo may be dead weight, but at least it has two great shots, shots that hint at Hou's true calling as the film equivalent of Odilon Redon: Those shots are the sex scene with the arrhythmically blinking lights and the opening shot of Shu Qi floating down a blue corridor. His M.O. while making Cafe Lumiere seems to have been to remove the two great shots from Millennium Mambo to make it more consistent. You be the judge if that sounds appealing. Hou does not need to refine -- you cannot refine the limbo idea further than Flowers of Shanghai. He needs to expand, to bloat outwards, to release the inner expressionist and genre-revitalizer that is being squandered so senselessly on clichéd minimalism. It's time for him to do a live-action remake of Akira or something. This kind of art film where the actors are supposed to be authentic because they are held facelessly in long-shot and speak in monosyllables is now every last bit as safe, ghettoized and stagnant as the Hollywood action blockbuster. ( What is the connection between "reality" and people who can't talk? It seems to me that people "in real life" never stop jabbering. ) Then again, considering that 2005 alone brought big-budget movies as diverse and rich in ideas as Aeon Flux, The Island, and King Kong, it's now safe to say that even Michael Bay has surpassed Hou, and that's really sad.The good news is that, though Hou is in his 50s, it frankly feels to me as if he hasn't even begun. There are a couple moments in this film that show the promise is still there, such as a moody bit early on in the bookstore when the room dims to a bloody sunset-red while Hitoto talks about babies with the faces of goblins. But whatever fear is holding him back, however comfortable it is to make the same film over and over and be hailed by the gullible and pretentious as the savior of cinema, Hou, your time as the darling of the Rotterdam, Venice, Toronto, Berlin and whatever else film festivals is almost up and people are catching onto your ruse double-quick. Two words for you: Atom Egoyan. Two more words, or maybe three: Tsai Ming-Liang. You are now cribbing from both of these tedious frauds who are about to go up their own dark tunnels forever. Risk your shirt on a sci-fi epic, sell out, be reviled -- but leave the social critiques to people that have no eye and no heart. Let your painterly talent express itself to the full. You're not going to ever get out of limbo otherwise.

A girl who is pregnant is visited by her parents and may not know who the father is. Her main friend works in a bookstore and records train sounds as a hobby. For this viewer, "Café Lumière," which had been long anticipated, was disappointing when finally seen. It didn't leave very strong impression and a week later it had almost faded from the mind. It seems to me that the resemblance to Ozu, whom this was commissioned by the producer as a sort of homage to, is superficial indeed. Ozu can make you cry. This, despite its Ozu-like structure, leaves you feeling rather blank. Perhaps this is because it's essentially about people avoiding real contact with each other. That's not the same as being reserved. In fact it's extremely different. People who are shy and reserved, as Ozu's characters tend to be, may very often care very intensely. The impression is that these people devised for Hou's version of Japan just don't ultimately seem to feel very much. If this is how things are now in Japan, too bad; but would Hou really know? He's Chinese. He has even admitted in interviews that culturally he was a bit out of his depth in coming to Japana to make a film. Despite very assured style, the deadpan story has no pulse. This is more a perversion of than homage to the great Ozu. Another commentator has said Café Lumière "may be the film that Ozu would have made if he lived in the modern age." It may be; but I don't think so. And if it were, then it is as well that Ozu did not live in the modern age, because he would have ceased to be Ozu.As I have said recently in another context, Hou doesn't always hit it, but when he does he flies to the moon. Hou can't make a movie without stylistic and visual elegance, and "Café Lumière," with its cool tranquility and measured pace and its delicate light, has those qualities. But he didn't make it to heaven this time. In the second part of his recent "Three Times," he did: all the way to the moon. So he can still fly, but this conscientious, measured effort plods.

Ozu is dead. If there's one thing that Hou manages to prove in his tribute to Ozu's centennial, it is that Ozu is dead. Never is there going to be another man who can portray human relationships in the same light as Ozu. The same steadfastness they have as they try as hard as they can to hold on to each other; the sadness they feel when having to leave the family; the difficulties of living together in one household; the moments of regret that they have when one of their family has to leave; and their final acceptance that these are all but a part of life.Hou shows us a Japan that has changed so much from the Japan that Ozu so painstakingly tries to hold on to by capturing it on his camera. Each tear, each regret, each joy is now lost in a world that tries too hard to change. Wim Wenders first laments this in Tokyo Ga on how banal Tokyo has become and how much of an imitation culture new Japanese culture is. Cafe Lumiere, while not being as impassioned as Wender's masterpiece, is every bit as pensive about its regret of the passing on of the old Japan that Ozu loves so much.While in Ozu's films, a pregnancy would herald a big event in a family's lifeline, in Cafe Lumiere it is merely a passing thought. While in Ozu's films, the lead character (most often played by goddess-like Hara Setsuko) would usually be self-sacrificial as best she can to ensure the family's togetherness, here Yoko is determined on striking out as a single mother, regardless of her father's silently burning disapproval.Undeniably, Hou doesn't pass much judgment on his characters. In fact the portrayal of Yoko only shows her as a very modern and much independent Japanese female that is fast becoming the norm in Japan. The female who does not want to be tied down and holds little regard of familial values. And definitely, it would be seen as regressive should Japan return to the past for the sake of the days when family was at the core of societal structure. After all, the definition of progress is change right? Yet, one can't help but feel the absence of Ozu in this movie, the absence that makes its tone all the more poignant in spite of its spots of warmth. Ozu seems to be like the ghost of Maggie Cheung in 2046, or the missing woman in L'Avventura; he is not there, and is never referenced in the movie, and yet, the opening shot of the movie and a few scenes of familial warmth gives one such a pang in the heart that is so distinctly Ozu. In fact, that Hou decides to have many shots of trains departing and leaving and criss-crossing each other in modern Tokyo, and letting us hear the all-familiar sounds of trains going across railways that is so definitive of Ozu's films, only shows that he is fully aware of this fact, and, like Wenders, is seeking to find what little there is left of Ozu's spirit. In the overwhelmingly modern backdrop of Tokyo, we see how something of the past, like the cafe that Yoko hunts for, that some people so want to preserve, has been turned into another urban development project. However, in the film, Hou also shows us that although the landscape of Tokyo now denies Ozu, there is still decidedly some of Ozu's warmth in human relationships. Like how Yoko still feels the same kindred spirit as she tucks in to her favorite dish that her mother has prepared; seeking out old sights in her hometown, sights that remind her of times when she was a kid and still not thinking of independence. And just perhaps, in showing all this, Hou is persuading us to accept life as what we can, just as how the people in Ozu's movies eventually have to accept the loss of one of their family members.I went to Tokyo last June and coincidentally, Kamakura was part of the itinerary. I remember how excited I was, since Kamakura was many a setting for Ozu's films, and it was the place where Ozu was buried after his death. As I reached the Kamakura station on the Enoshima metroline, my heart was all awashed with glee to see that the station looked almost exactly the same as it looked in Ozu's films. The same old signboard, and the same railway tracks against looming mountains. And yet as I walked around Kamakura (now a popular tourist spot for its famous Daibutsu or Big Buddha), I couldn't help but notice how foreign it was despite its quaint Japanese-ness. There were so many tourists walking around the town amidst its quiet surbuban houses, and so many signboards blaring English signs. In a bid to find Ozu's grave, every time I saw a cemetery I would go over to look if there was a tablet that has only a 'mu' character on it. But I never found it. Sigh.