Dis­cov­er this gen­tle Japan­ese dra­ma about an eccen­tric family

School­boy Hajime (Takahi­ro Sato) runs pant­i­ng across a rice field, but miss­es the train car­ry­ing away for­ev­er the girl from his class whom he loves but has nev­er had the courage even to address. The wide shots and rur­al set­ting (Tochi­gi Pre­fec­ture, north of Tokyo) might sug­gest that The Taste of Tea rep­re­sents a clas­si­cal mode of Japan­ese cin­e­ma, as might the sub­se­quent omnipres­ence of cher­ry blos­soms, the focus on a fam­i­ly, the pass­ing train (a recur­ring motif in the films of Yasu­jirō Ozu), the gen­tle pace, and even the film’s sim­ple, calm­ing title.

But then, as Hajime sad­ly watch­es the train recede into the dis­tance with all his roman­tic aspi­ra­tions on board, a sec­ond, 3D-ani­mat­ed train snakes out of his head into the cloudy blue sky with a minia­ture, wav­ing ver­sion of the girl at its win­dow, leav­ing a square, train-shaped hole in the boy’s fore­head, and we are aware that what we are watch­ing is a long way from Ozu.

In its leisure­ly way, The Taste of Tea fol­lows the Harunos, a clan whose indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive pecu­liar­i­ties ensure that the film nev­er con­forms to the clichés of a clas­sic fam­i­ly dra­ma. His heart quick­ly mend­ing, shy Hajime trans­fers his dis­tant affec­tions to new­com­er Aoi Suzuichi (Anna Tsuchiya, Kamikaze Girls, Saku­ran), and man­ages to get clos­er to her via the suit­ably strate­gic game of go. Hajime’s lit­tle sis­ter Sachiko (Maya Ban­no) is haunt­ed by a gigan­tic dop­pel­gänger of her­self that con­stant­ly watch­es her.

Sachiko painstak­ing­ly tries to rid her­self of the ghost­ly dou­ble through a form of exor­cism that involves, well, exer­cise, after hear­ing a child­hood sto­ry of a vague­ly sim­i­lar haunt­ing told by her vis­it­ing uncle Ayano (Asano Tadanobu), who is now awk­ward­ly revis­it­ing a past, unre­solved love.

The children’s moth­er Yoshiko (Sato­mi Tezu­ka) tries to jug­gle her home life with a career in ani­ma­tion – an art that she has inher­it­ed from her father Aki­ra (Tat­suya Gashuin), a once famous ani­ma­tor who is now age­ing eccen­tri­cal­ly in a room adjoined to the house and work­ing on a covert project. Yoshiko’s dis­af­fect­ed-seem­ing hus­band Nobuo (Tomokazu Miu­ra) works as a hyp­nother­a­pist in the city, help­ing oth­ers find their hap­py place, even as he has secret­ly found his own.

The Harunos are cen­tral to The Taste of Tea, but while the film is full of inci­dents, most of these are digres­sions, feints and sketch­es, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to pin down a nar­ra­tive core to this fam­i­ly por­trait. The film’s form is sim­i­lar­ly unsta­ble, incor­po­rat­ing into its live action ghosts, dig­i­tal effects, giants, singing, danc­ing, dream sequences and ani­ma­tion even as this rus­tic set­ting is made to accom­mo­date cross-dress­ing school­boys, yakuza, kick­ass office assis­tants, tokusat­su cos­play­ers and a can­ni­bal­is­tic ​‘jun­gle woman’.

Per­haps the best way of approach­ing the aes­thet­ic of a film whose main char­ac­ters are either artists or at least oper­at­ing in the imag­i­na­tive sphere is to look at what they them­selves say about art. When Akira’s oth­er son, the man­ga artist Ikki Todor­o­ki (played by Ikki Todor­o­ki), mix­es a bizarre song-and-dance num­ber with his sec­ond assis­tant and his father, one of the sound engi­neers says of the per­form­ers, ​“They’re like per­vert­ed aliens from some unknown world,” while Hajime says of the song, ​“It’s more cool than weird, and it stays in your head.”

These reac­tions might equal­ly serve as descrip­tions of The Taste of Tea, which bridges the gap between writer/​director Kat­suhi­to Ishii’s pre­vi­ous Taran­ti­no-esque ensem­ble capers Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl and Par­ty 7, and the out-and-out freaky sur­re­al­ism of his sub­se­quent Funky For­est (co-direct­ed with Hajime Ishi­hine and Shu­nichi­ro Miki). Here, while there are mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters and all man­ner of odd­ball excur­sions, every­thing is anchored in a gen­tle, affec­tion­ate view of a house­hold whose mem­bers are ever so slow­ly find­ing them­selves. The tea that every­body drinks is warm and restora­tive, and so is Ishii’s strange, sen­ti­men­tal film.

The Taste of Tea is avail­able on Blu-ray – for the first time any­where in the world – from Third Win­dow Films on 5 October.