Tale
Tatsuo and his daughter Haru run the Takano tofu shop in Onomichi
When Tatsuo discovers he’s sick, he worries about his daughter being left alone, and unbeknownst to her, he sets out to find Haru a match. While the plot could (and already has) filled quite a few family dramas, here, with the magnetic presence of veteran Tatsuya Fuji (Empire of the Senses), the…
Director/writer Mitsuhiro Mihara’s plaintive 2023 father-daughter drama is too obvious to compare favorably to Yasujiro Ozu’s family drama classics
Read more. In a story centered on Tatsuo, an elderly tofu master in Onomichi, and his singularly devoted daughter Haru, Mihara is clearly channeling Ozu’s “Late Spring” and “Early Summer” to capture the specificity of their close relationship.
The slapstick moments felt like a different movie than intended
The plot moves along slowly and each finds a potential partner, but not before a requisite amount of comedy scenes featuring stereotypical characters are played out at fairly length. Regardless, screen veteran Tatsuya Fuji plays Tatsuo with a curmudgeonly flair, while Kumiko Aso provides attentive assistance as Haru.
For a film with similar sensibilities about the art behind unique Japanese food, I suggest watching Naomi Kawase’s 2015 “An (Sweet Bean)”
Fuji’s scenes with Kumi Nakamura as an ailing older woman were touching, though the atomic bomb tie-ins seemed forced to shoehorn more pathos into the film.