as a bit of an appetizer to the nyaff, i caught hou hsiao-hsien’s koji jiko (cafe lumiere) last nite at the anthology with jess. koji jiko is hou’s homage to japanese director yasujiro ozu, and holy crap its a good thing my curiousity never kicked in and made me get an ozu dvd. the movie follows (in the loosest sense) a girl named yoko as she researches a taiwanese composer, visits her parents, drink milk, sleep, hang with her bookshop friend, ride trains, and look for a cafe named “dat”. the narrative thread barely exists, and the movie is more voyeur than story. im sure there are people out there who would extoll the brilliant and steady pace of the movie and how it illuminates the minutiae of everyday rhetoric blah blah blah…but not me. do something you lazy fuck…go do drugs or sell your panties or play some dance dance revolution. *sigh* i initially compared the movie (in my head) to the works of tsai ming-liang, but then i realized that his movies actually had a sense of closure by the end of the movie. plodding yes, but it felt like a story was told. hou channeling ozu doesnt seem to fly with me. not my cup of tea…*shrug*
we did get a late din from soba-ya afterwards. mmm…squid guts and unagi…
