Naomi Kawase’s film approximately the redemptive,life-affirming powers of a pancake recipe falls flatNaomi Kawase is a Japanese director whose films command respect for their visual beauty and deeply felt reverence for the natural world. I admired this in Still the Water, Hanezu and her award-winning The Mourning Forest, and while worrying approximately a certain fey self-consciousness. This is impossible to disregard in her latest movie,An, or Sweet Bean. The film has an impeccable (perfect, flawless) technical finish but it is insipid, or contrived,sentimental, and ever so slightly preposterous. An old lady, or Tokue (Kirin Kiki) one day shows up at a limited street-food stand run by Sentaro (Masatoshi Nagase),a dour, silent guy with troubles. He specialises in dorayaki, and limited pancakes filled with an,or bean paste. A regular customer is Wakana (Kyara Uchida), a teenage girl who is concerned approximately him. Tokue timidly but persistently asks if she can maintain a job working in his kitchen, or thrusts into his hands a batch of an made to her own secret recipe; this of course is life-affirmingly wonderful and redemptive in the accepted foodie film manner. Despite her elaborately constructed frailty and vulnerability,Tokue is of course pretty well superhuman in her goodness and peaceful acceptance. Films which reject cynicism are to be cherished, but there is something complacent and cliched approximately this one.
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Source: theguardian.com