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Award-winning trailblazing Japanese actress Kirin Kiki died on Sept. 15. Kiki recently appeared in Shoplifters and had been fighting cancer since being diagnosed in 2004, but the official cause of her death has yet to be announced. She was 75.

Kiki was born Keiko Nakatani in Tokyo in 1943. She started her acting career in the ’60s under the name Yuki Chihi in a theater troupe, where she met actor Shin Kishida. They would marry and then later divorce in 1968. In 1973, she married musician Yuya Uchida and they had a daughter Yayako.

She would go on to find success in TV in shows such as Shichinin no Mago (Seven Grandchildren) as well as Terauchi Kantaro Ikka (Kantaro Terauchi Family) and Jikandesuyo (It’s Time).

On the film side, she starred in Tokyo Tawa: Okan to Boku to Tokidoki Oton (Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad) and Chronicle of My Mother. The two...

Naomi Kawase’s film about the redemptive, life-affirming powers of a pancake recipe falls flat

Naomi 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, while worrying about a certain fey self-consciousness. This is impossible to ignore in her latest movie, An, or Sweet Bean. The film has an impeccable technical finish but it is insipid, contrived, sentimental, and ever so slightly preposterous.

An old lady, Tokue (Kirin Kiki) one day shows up at a little street-food stand run by Sentaro (Masatoshi Nagase), a dour, silent guy with troubles. He specialises in dorayaki, little pancakes filled with an, or bean paste. A regular customer is Wakana (Kyara Uchida), a teenage girl who is concerned about him. Tokue timidly but persistently asks if she can...

Sweet Bean (An) Kino Lorber Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya, d-based on Rotten Tomatoes Grade: B Director: Naomi Kawase Written by: Naomi Kawase based on Durian Sukegawa’s novel Cast: Kirin Kiki, Masatoshi Nagase, Kyara Uchida, Miyoko Asada, Etsuko Ichihara Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 2/17/16 Opens: March 18, 2016 Eating is a social occasion to such an extent that we may feel sorry for those, like business executives, who must often dine alone. People bond over food. State dinners are de rigeuer in much of the world, sharing of food helping along agreements between countries. And people bond as well over cooking. Though cooking at home is often a [ Read More ]

The post Sweet Bean Paste Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Despite being one of the art cinema world’s most acclaimed filmmakers, director Naomi Kawase is a relative unknown when it comes to even the most studied cinephiles here stateside. Becoming arguably one of the most believed filmmakers at film festivals like, and particularly, the Cannes Film Festival, Kawase has amassed a career spawning some truly intriguing cinematic experiments, that simply haven’t hit a nerve with wide audiences. However, that will hopefully change with her newest, and most accessible, feature.

Entitled Sweet Bean, Kawase takes a decidedly traditional approach to this adaptation of a novel from Durian Sukeagwa, which itself looks and feels like a far cry from her last widely discussed feature, 2011’s Hanezu. The film introduces us to Sentaro, a quiet, unassuming owner of a small dorayaki shop in Tokyo. Dorayaki is ostensibly two small pancakes filled with a sweet red bean paste known as “an,” which...

Despite her prolific output, with films often times making their way to the Cannes Film Festival, Naomi Kawase seems to go under-appreciated here in the United States due to the lack of distribution. Thankfully her latest drama, Sweet Bean (previously titled An and Sweet Red Bean Paste), was picked up by Kino Lorber and will be arriving next month. Following the story of a small bakery, it was one of our favorite dramas of Cannes last year and today brings the U.S. trailer.

We said in our review, “Contributing immeasurably to this empathetic tone is Kiki’s soulful, splendidly unaffected performance. Playing someone with a sad secret to guard and a militantly cheerful exterior as defense, this portrayal could have gone off the sappy or the farcical end so easily. Instead, she succeeds in first tricking you into seeing this harmlessly wacky old lady who talks to red beans and greets birds,...

An

Directed and written by Naomi Kawase

Written by Naomi Kawase, based on the novel by Tetsuya Akikawa

Japan, 2015

Alright-ness continues at this year’s festival with the Un Certain Regard opening film An (“Sweet Red Bean Paste”) by Cannes regular Naomi Kawase. The film stars Masatoshi Nagase as Sen, a middle-aged dorayaki pastry maker with alcohol issues and Kirin Kiki as Tokue, an elderly woman eager to work as Sen’s assistant in the pastry shop. The youthful touch is provided by Kyara Uchida as a shy schoolgirl having a hard time getting along with her single mother. Reluctant at first, Sen ends up admiring Tokue’s unique bean paste making talent and employs her to the displeasure of the pastry shop’s owner. Gradually, the three generations forge an intimate friendship as their respective traumas are revealed.

This humble drama offers a predictable, even if delicious, delve into...