The Taste of Tea

Katsuhito Ishii
2004

This pleasant comedy is a slightly scattered, multi-faced picture with influences ranging all the way from Jacques Tati and Luis Bunuel to some of Takashi Miike's more surrealist impulses, as well as the pleasantly meandering quality of Ozu. Its a steady, unhurried Sunday afternoon of a film centering around family togetherness, the foibles of childhood, and good-clean laughs.

The film concerns itself with a family living in out-of-the-way Tochigi prefecture in some extremely green and rural looking surroundings. Mamma's an aspiring manga artist, Dad's some sort of hypnotherapist, Uncle Ayano's a semi-listless shaggy haired audio mixer, little sis is plagued by an enormous avatar of herself, and big brother is a perpetually crushed-out Go enthusiast. Let's not forget a second weirdo uncle with a fierce bowl-cut and a grandfather who looks and acts like the anime characters he used to draw. This is an offbeat yet immensely recognizable family illuminated by the less-than-ordinary domestic idyll of Ishii's script.

Deliberate filmmaking is the name of the game here. The cinematography is simultaneously wry and deadpan, punctuated with brilliantly timed jokes and performances that are psychologically serene, pleasantly candid, and emotionally resonant. At times the picture is guilty of being overly sentimental, occasionally veering into corny and sappy. Ishii also comes dangerously close to the overly quirky, soulless posturing of film's like Zach Braff's "Garden State." Thankfully the director always manages to pull it back from the brink, preventing his quaint family study from becoming a heartless hipsters' tin-man. Some notably wonderful sequences include a (literally) shat on yakuza ghost, a pair of enthusiastic otaku sporting some seriously nerdy robot/hero costumes, and a brutal beatdown dispensed by a petit, squeaky-voiced secretary to name a few. This brush with violence aside, there is little slapstick to be had, and much of the humor is quietly mused over as the family members enjoy cups of the film's eponymous beverage together during mornings and evenings.

Review by Brett A. Scieszka