Sweet Bean

Some­how, the Japan­ese direc­tor Nao­mi Kawase has devel­oped some­thing of a tox­ic rep­u­ta­tion in the west. This might be due to the fact that her films often play in high pro­file slots at cer­tain major Euro­pean film fes­ti­vals, and then are sel­dom seen again after being met with a polite response by crit­ics. Mat­ters hit a nadir in 2014 with her dis­as­trous, depres­sive teen love sto­ry Still the Water, the first of her films to receive dis­tri­b­u­tion in the UK. Her new work, Sweet Bean, set­tles the scales a lit­tle. It’s no mas­ter­piece, but it’s a sol­id and sur­pris­ing melo­dra­ma that draws on the clas­sic mod­el of inspi­ra­tional lit­tle old ladies as seen in films like Cocoon or Dri­ving Miss Daisy.

The title refers to the paste which is spread between two small pan­cakes and sold as a pop­u­lar snack food in Japan – known as Doraya­ki. Masatoshi Nagase plays Sen­tarô, the strange­ly lack­adaisi­cal own­er of a Doraya­ki con­ces­sion, whose bean paste recipe is sol­id, but far, far from excep­tion­al. But he cares not. He just wants to get through the day, serv­ing the same cou­ple of reg­u­lars and then get­ting the hell out of there. Yet one day the great Japan­ese actress Kirin Kiki (play­ing Tokue) wad­dles up, deter­mined to con­vince Sen­tarô to switch to her supe­ri­or recipe.

The film presents itself as the tale of a hard-bit­ten cyn­ic hav­ing his heart melt­ed by an unfea­si­bly cute and unflap­pable old lady who is moti­vat­ed by her desire to have the world enjoy her delec­table fam­i­ly cook­ing. The best scene arrives in the form of an extend­ed food porn mon­tage in which Tokue relays the secret recipe to her new boss. She doesn’t real­ly get involved in the prepa­ra­tion process as she’s got a mys­te­ri­ous injury on her hands.

And just at the point where you think that everything’s about to wrap up nice­ly, with qual­i­ty crafts­man­ship and ded­i­ca­tion win­ning out the day, the film makes a skid­ding hand-break turn into the tru­ly bizarre. The less you know about what hap­pens in the film’s clos­ing stretch the bet­ter, but it’s rather a bold acknowl­edge­ment that life is beset with ran­dom tragedies and upset­ting rev­e­la­tions which con­stant­ly threat­en to upend the sta­tus quo.

This maybe won’t be the film that has Kawase fast-tracked into the auteur A‑leagues, but it cer­tain­ly shows that she can ​“do” robust, con­ven­tion­al sto­ry­telling, and then add some late-game ingre­di­ents which serve to sweet­en rather than sour the over­all taste.