Café Lumière
Café Lumière is a 2003 Japanese film directed by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien for Shochiku as homage to Yasujirō Ozu, with direct reference to the late director's Tokyo Story. It premiered at a festival commemorating the centenary of Ozu's birth. It was nominated for Golden Lion at the 2004 Venice Film Festival.
The film, with an all-Japanese cast, is set in Tokyo, where it was shot.
Plot
The story revolves around Yoko Inoue, a young Japanese woman doing research on Taiwanese composer Jiang Wen-Ye, whose work is featured on the soundtrack. The late composer's Japanese wife and daughter also make appearances as themselves.Cast
- Yo Hitoto - Yoko Inoue
- Tadanobu Asano - Hajime Takeuchi
- Masato Hagiwara - Seiji
- Kimiko Yo - Yoko's stepmother
- Nenji Kobayashi - Yoko's father
Reception
Café Lumière was placed at 98 on Slant Magazine's best films of the 2000s.In 2019, director Steve McQueen named it as the best film of the 21st century, describing it as " film that happens without you knowing."
Another review finds obvious similarities with Hou's earlier work in this homage to Ozu: "Visually the film is very much in line with other late 90s/early 00s Hou films, sporting rather long takes and an almost static, slow-moving camera observing the characters."