One of the new waves in international cinema of the 1980s and ‘90s occurred in Taiwan, and no other filmmaker was more closely associated with its artistic accomplishments than Hou Hsiao-hsien. Beginning with realist films that depicted Taiwanese life with great immediacy (A Summer at Grandpa’s, The Time to Live and the Time to Die) and progressing to complex investigations of national identity (A City of Sadness, The Puppetmaster) and meditative dramas (The Flowers of Shanghai), Hou became renowned for his elegant long takes, lush visual style, and tragic emotional force.
Café Lumière (2003) is his most recent film, which he made to commemorate Yasujiro Ozu’s centenary. While it’s a shining example of Hou’s aesthetic concerns it’s also a surprisingly warm film that celebrates a young woman’s personal resilience. Yoko (Yo Hitoto) is a student in Tokyo researching the life of a Taiwanese musician, and she quietly surmounts modern problems—family breakdown, alienating technology, uncertain relationships—with a quiet zest for living. Hou's extended takes capture various characters doing mundane tasks (laundry, cooking, riding public transit) and beautifully convey the physical realities of modern Japan while suggesting a deeper significance in the everyday.
Made as a centenary tribute to one of the giants of cinema, Yasujiro Ozu, Cafe Lumiere echoes many of his recurring themes such as the breakdown of communication between parents and children. In a quiet, unhurried style and with acute attention to the minutiae of daily life, the film focuses on the travails of an independent young woman researching a project on a Taiwanese composer. Pregnant, but with no intention of marrying the child's father, she must deal with both the concerns of her parents and the pressures of her modern life.
2046 
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Cafe Lumiere 
