Product Details

• Actors: Yo Hitoto, Tadanobu Asano, Masato Hagiwara, Kimiko Yo, Nenji Kobayashi
• Directors: Hsiao-hsien Hou
• Writers: Hsiao-hsien Hou, T'ien-wen Chu
• Producers: Ching-Song Liao, Fumiko Osaka, Hideji Miyajima, Ichirô Yamamoto
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: English, Japanese
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Fox Lorber
• DVD Release Date: December 27, 2005
• Run Time: 103 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000BQ5J1I
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,296 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Cafe Lumiere" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

CAFE LUMIERE - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gentle and Subtle, February 8, 2006

By 

Amy E. C. (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cafe Lumiere (DVD)

This is a very different kind of storytelling. Everything is shown, almost nothing is told. You have to be keen to pick up the clues, but the scenes are all so quiet that it's too easy to think nothing is happening. Often, even the placement of the camera is telling you something.

It's a slow, gentle, slice-of-life look at one modern woman's relationships. Not for everyone.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Shadow and Light, August 5, 2006

By 

Daitokuji31 (Black Glass) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cafe Lumiere (DVD)

Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien
Duration: 103 Minutes

Directed by one of Taiwan's most acclaimed directors, Goodbye South, Goodbye, Flowers of Shanghai, Millennium Mambo, but filmed entirely in Japan and in the Japanese language, Café Lumiere is a tribute for the 100th birthday of one of Japan's most famous directors: Ozu Yasujiro. Renowned for his use of shadow and light and unmoving cameras, Ozu's films mainly concentrated on the internal struggles of families inside there traditional, often spacious, homes where not only did the hidden tensions between family members come to the surface, but also the care and affection, albeit subdued, that the family members hold for each other. In this 2003 film, Hou Hsiao-hsien attempts to capture Ozu's celluloid landscape with his own camera, but how successful is he?

A writer, Inoue Yoko has just returned home to Japan from Taiwan where she continued her research on the Taiwanese composer Jiang Wen-ye. Suffering from nightmares on her trip, she calls her friend Hajime, Asano Tadanobu, the proprietor of a used bookstore, and tells him of her nightmare about a baby whose face began to melt like ice. Later she travels to the quiet confines of the bookstore to pick up a couple of books and CDs Hajime acquired for me. Yoko then spends an inordinate amount of time wandering Tokyo before going to see her father and stepmother. Almost completely silent, almost the only sentence uttered by Yoko while at home is that she would like her mother to prepare her some nikujaga, beef stew. However, that night, after her father has gone to bed, Yoko tells her stepmother that she is pregnant and that she does not plan on marrying the baby's Taiwanese father but instead that she intends to raise the child on her own. It is later revealed that she does not want to marry her boyfriend because he is a mama's boy whose mother still controls most of his life.

With this information later revealed to him, Yoko's father becomes even more silent, and Yoko continues her day to day activities researching Jiang Wen-ye and enjoying the company of Hajime who helps her with her research while he continues his own obsessions of recording the sounds of trains.

Although a bit vacuous, Café Lumiere is beautifully filmed. The interior of Hajime's bookstore, Yoko's apartment and family home, and the interiors of the cafes are stunning to behold because of the mixture of shadow and light. Hajime's bookstore has an almost claustrophobic comforting nature with its hundreds of books and dark wood. The characters come off as a bit empty, but this might stem from Hou's desire to create characters who are so absorbed within the interiors of their own beings that they chose to reduce their communications with the outside world. While a decent movie, Café Lumiere is definitely not a must see unless one is either a major fan of Hou Hsiao-hsien or maybe Asano Tadanobu.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Movie for Lovers of Cityscapes, April 15, 2010

By 

Dalton McTeague (Claremont, NH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cafe Lumiere (DVD)

The story is about generational change. For example, the father, of the WWII generation, seems puzzled by the new Japan represented by his daughter's independence and carefree lifestyle. Still he quietly accepts the new ways of his daughter, who does not hold to the old animosities or cultural proprieties (though as independent as she is she is always courteous toward others, something often lacking in American culture).

The story has little in the way of plot. It's more like a cinematic stream of consciousness. I enjoy foreign films such as CAFE LUMIERE because they allow me to visit other cultures. Another movie I recently watched is Gigante, a movie set in Montevideo, Uruguay. It has a stronger plot, but both movies give you a slice of life from different cultures. They are not Hollywood-like movies in which the structure, polish and stars often conceal the everyday lived reality of people, places, and cultures depicted.

One of the things I enjoyed most in CAFE LUMIERE were the cityscapes--especially of the trains. I also enjoyed seeing how the Japanese sustain a cultural politeness and respect midst environments that are claustrophobically urbanized and ultramodern. They seem very much aware of the aesthetic created from being polite and considerate. So the film shows that beauty can be found in noisy, oppressive artificial environments that can even assault the senses with movement, congestion, noise, if one knows how to see it and especially how to hear it (the young man in the story is fascinated by the sounds of commuter trains).

Also I found the special features quite interesting and informative. If you are looking for a strong story, then this movie may not be for you. If you think you might enjoy a cinematic poem featuring a slice of life in Tokyo and its outskirts, you just may enjoy the film as much as I did.