{"id":14980,"date":"2022-05-28T20:00:07","date_gmt":"2022-05-29T00:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=14980"},"modified":"2022-05-25T17:56:47","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T21:56:47","slug":"cafe-lumiere-2003-hou-hsiao-hsien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/14980","title":{"rendered":"Cafe Lumiere (2003, Hou Hsiao-hsien)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hou is weirdly good at capturing technology in transition.  Lead character Yoko has a cellphone in this, but there are pay phones around, and you could still call a bar and ask to speak with a customer.  There&#8217;s also a minidisc recorder, which is very exciting to me.  The story, not so much though &#8211; Hou thought it would be interesting and Ozu-like to follow a Japanese girl around.  His follow-up <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/4038\">Three Times<\/a><\/em> was slowly sensuous, while this is just uneventful.<\/p>\n<p><em>a womb of trains:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image21\/cafelum1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>She visits her parents, tells mom she&#8217;s pregnant over a late night snack.  She won&#8217;t marry the baby daddy, who lives in Thailand and works at an umbrella factory, bringing her umbrellas when they visit.  She researches a dream she had about a goblin stealing a child, and interviews locals to locate a cafe which a Taiwanese author used to frequent.  Her book store friend records train sounds on minidisc, and people murmur to each other about art and memories and technology.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image21\/cafelum2.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Rosenbaum called it &#8220;a provocative and haunting look at Tokyo and the overall drift of the world that&#8217;s slow to reveal its secrets and beauties,&#8221; and I was disappointed not to agree.  Yoko&#8217;s parents are stars &#8211; Kimiko Yo of <em>Yumeji<\/em> and <em>Hiruko the Goblin<\/em>, and Nenji Kobayashi of <em>Twilight Samurai<\/em> and a bunch of Obayashis &#8211; and the minidisc guy is <em>Ichi the Killer<\/em> star Tadanobu Asano.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hou is weirdly good at capturing technology in transition. Lead character Yoko has a cellphone in this, but there are pay phones around, and you could still call a bar and ask to speak with a customer. There&#8217;s also a minidisc recorder, which is very exciting to me. The story, not so much though &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[369,211,36,1664],"class_list":["post-14980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2000s","tag-hou-hsiao-hsien","tag-japan","tag-sound-recording"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15003,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14980\/revisions\/15003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}