SWEET BEAN. (2015) DIRECTED BY/SCREENPLAY BY NAOMI KAWASE. BASED ON THE NOVEL 'AN' BY DURIAN SUKEGAWA. STARRING MASATOSHI NAGASE, KIRIN KIKI, KYARA UCHIDA, MIYOKO ASADA AND ETSUKO ICHIHARA.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This marvellous film, which had its prestigious debut at the 2015
Cannes Film Festival, is the story of three random Japanese people
who come together and form a sort of little surrogate family because
each of them has a strong feeling of isolation and loneliness in common.
Sentaro
is a middle-aged cook who runs a tiny restaurant-slash-takeaway
that's more like a kiosk, having seating for only about three people.
He only sells one kind of food. It's called dorayaki,
a
kind of fried pancake filled with sweet red bean paste. I'm reliably
informed that the Japanese simply adore their paste and they slather
it on everything, haha.
I'm
very attracted to Sentaro. He's just my type. Tall, dark, brooding,
stubbly, lonely, chain-smoker, clearly has personal problems which
only the love of a good woman (possibly
myself...?) can
solve. I'm a sucker for that kind of troubled guy. I always think I
can save 'em, haha.
Sentaro's
obviously not happy in his life and work, hardly surprising since
he's not even working for himself. He's only managing the kiosk for
someone else, a married couple to whom he owes a mysterious debt.
Mmmm, someone's
clearly
got a secret past...! Can't wait to find out what it is.
Wakana
is a secondary school student of about fifteen or sixteen. She's a
bit of a loner, this one. Her single mum likes the booze and the
ciggies and the men and Wakana's only real company, apart from when
she hangs out at the dorayaki
shop,
is a gorgeous little bright yellow canary called Marvy. Sentaro gives
Wakana the edible 'rejects'
from
the shop and that's about all there is to her life.
Into both of their lives comes Tokue Yoshii, an elderly arthritic
lady of seventy-six who asks Sentaro if she can have the advertised
job at the shop. Sentaro refuses at first on account of the old
girl's advanced years and obvious frailty. But when he tastes her
home-made bean paste, which tastes a million times better than his
processed shop-bought stuff, he changes his mind.
Tokue
is an extraordinary old gal. She seems to revel in the glory of
nature and every living thing. She talks to the beans while she's
waiting for them to cook so that she can 'hear
their stories.'
'Listen
to the story of their journey,' she
urges the man she now calls 'Boss.'
'I always listen to the stories the beans tell. Everything in this
world has a story to tell. Making beans is all about heart, sonny.'
Sentaro,
who probably hasn't admired a cherry blossom tree or a falling leaf
in God-knows-how-long, let alone listened to what the beans are
trying to tell him, is a little bemused by her. Everything makes her
happy. You know there aren't too many people like that around
nowadays, who don't have cellphones and who don't need technology to
make 'em happy.
She takes real pleasure in getting up at the crack of dawn to
painstakingly and laboriously prepare the beans by hand with
Sentaro's help. He does the heavy pot-lifting. Tokue does the
important stuff like chatting to the beans while inhaling their
glorious fragrance and stuff, stuff like that...!
Anyway,
business is booming at the dorayaki
shop
because of Tokue's wildly sussessful bean paste pancakes. People are
queuing outside the shop for dorayaki.
Then
suddenly business begins to fall off, until one day it disappears
altogether. What's gone wrong?
Well, it appears that one of our little threesome has a secret that's
not exactly a secret, if you know what I mean, and the public's
gotten wind of it and now they're steering clear of the little shop.
It's such a sad and almost unbelievable secret.
It
literally had me running to Google
straight
afterwards to find out if such a thing still happens in the twenty-first century.
When I found out that it's still very much a thing in certain parts
of the world, I was unbearably sad for the rest of the
day.
The whole film, which has a woman's hand all over it directing-wise, is just so incredibly emotional anyway. The
friend with whom I watched it described it rather aptly as 'taking
a ride on the feels train,' which
I thought summed the experience up perfectly.
Mind you, this friend has something of a wickedly inappropriate sense of humour too.
When I went to start dinner after watching the film, she kept yelling
at me:
'Old
Lady from SWEET BEAN licked all your forks...!' which
was somewhat less
sympathetic
and sweet, haha.
Find out what happened to Tokue's lovely blouse that her mother made
her years ago, by the way, and I bet you anything you like you won't
be able to keep from crying. Same goes for you, ladies...!
Anyway, I'm really annoyed with myself for having missed this
beautifully-shot film when it came to the cinema in August this year.
It would have been so nice to see those magnificent cherry blossom trees on the
big screen!
If
you missed the cinema release of SWEET
BEAN yourself,
it's out now on home release courtesy of EUREKA
ENTERTAINMENT LTD.
It's
a slow-burner of a film that'll hit you right in the feels, haha.
Enjoy it and always remember Old
Lady From SWEET BEAN's
advice:
'Each
one of us has meaning in our lives.'
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
Loved this little movie, funny, but also heartbreaking film, thanks again Sandra for a fantastic review
ReplyDeleteI loved this feel good movie. Great review Sandra
ReplyDelete