Café Lumière

Café Lumière (珈琲時光, Kōhī Jikō) 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 (1953). 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 (played by Yo Hitoto), 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 (井上 陽子 Inoue Yōko)

Tadanobu Asano - Hajime Takeuchi (竹内 肇 Takeuchi Hajime)

Masato Hagiwara - Seiji

Kimiko Yo - Yoko's stepmother

Nenji Kobayashi - Yoko's father

Reception

Café Lumière was placed at 98 on Slant's best films of the 2000s.

In 2019, director Steve McQueen named it as the best film of the 21st century, describing it as "[a] 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."

Analysis

An analysis in 3 Quarks Daily explains: The lack remains, if not as precisely identifiable a lack as in Ozu. Where the older, Japanese filmmaker illustrated the dissolution of his people's families, the younger, Taiwanese filmmaker illustrates the results of that dissolution. This more complicated situation all but demands the hybrid sort of vision you get from crossing Ozu's with Hou's.