EQUINOX FLOWER (1958)

彼岸花 

dir: Yasujiro Ozu

Shochiku (Ofuna Studio)

Sept 7, 1958

118 minutes Color

Shin Saburi as Wataru Hirayama

Kinyo Tanaka as Kiyoko Hirayama

Ineko Arima as Setsuko Hirayama

Miyuki Kuwano as Hisako Hirayama
Yoshiko Kuga as Fumiko Mikami
Keiji Sada as Masahiko Taniguchi

Having enjoyed Tokyo Twilight a great deal, I watched director Yasujiro Ozu's next film, made a year later, Equinox Flower; featuring Ineko Arima (Tokyo Twilight) and Miyuki Kuwano (Two years before 'Cruel Story of Youth') as sisters.

What I had observed in the previous film, as far as style, is even more pronounced here. Stationary camera framed on the scene, allowing the characters to act out the story - there are no tricks here - other than the simplistic beauty of staging - this is about straight forward storytelling. 

Successful businessman Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) has two daughters, one of whom seeks to get married outside the older, traditional arranged marriage idea favored by her father. In fact, she's found the man she wants to marry, and her dad isn't too happy with that.

Once again, we see this all unfold, almost as an invisible outsider, able to spy upon the private conversations of these people. And it succeeds in that, this isn't American drama, it's the quiet, respectable, peaceful drama of Japan - no lamps get broken, no one falls out of a second story window - it moves along at a quiet pace, telling the story.

For some movie watches, that might seem boring. For film buffs, it's interesting to see the slow transformation of the father, if he really does transform at all - this is sort of the other side of the youth rebellion movement - how it crept into the well to do family home and slowly changed the way the Japanese went about everyday life.

Not to make it sound TOO stuffy, like real life, it has it's humorous moments ("I know you tend to go on and on, so I went to the bathroom first!"), and it really is a beautiful film (when Ozu shoots an outdoor scene, it tends to be spectacular in it's beauty).