Café Lumiere

This subtle, soothing film may deceive in its soft yet confident approach, sure that it will send out the right message with the correct images at the perfect pace. Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien here has fashioned a 100th-birthday-year homage to Yasujiro Ozu, the famed Japanese director who died in 1963, not the least by setting this quiet drama in Japan. It is a serene story about a young teacher (pop starlet Yo Hitoto) who is pregnant by a student-boyfriend she doesn't wish to marry, is as luminous and quiet as an Ozu film.
There isn’t much of a plot – the pregnant girl drifts around Tokyo by train and tram, sees her parents, and eats.
Some of the best, pithiest bits are when she visits a bookstore and discusses things in depth with her shy friend who works there. In one scene in particular, I found myself watching the dog in the background in a kind of white-plastic-bag-American-Beauty kind of way.
In attempting to use Ozu’s elegant if detached style of filmmaking – where we learn all about the character's inner world even when we don’t see their faces’ reactions – Hou doesn’t entirely succeed. Hence, Café Lumiere doesn't deliver the kind of depth that it could. What Hou does manage is a series of scenes that are minimalistic and poetically

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