Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice

Made the year before his career defining masterpiece, Tokyo Story, Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice is one of Yasujiro Ozu's most beautiful domestic sagas, a subtly piercing portrait of a marriage coming quietly undone. Secrets and deceptions strain the already tenuous relationship of a childless, middle aged couple, as the wife's city bred sophistication clashes with the husband's small town simplicity, and a generational sea change in the form of their headstrong, modern niece sweeps over their household. Ozu's expert grasp of family dynamics receives one of its most spirited treatments, with a wry, tender humour and an expansiveness that moves the action from the home, to the baseball stadiums and the shops of post-war Tokyo.