Sweet Bean

Club Cert: now showing IFI

We see relatively little Japanese cinema, so this bittersweet story is a lovely treat. An engaging human story it also provides some lovely and interesting glimpses into an intriguing culture.

Sentarô (Masatoshi Nagase) runs a tiny stand that makes only dorayaki, a Japanese sweet treat of two pancakes around a sweet bean paste. He is middle-aged and clearly unhappy, yet he remains a kind man. To Wakana (Kyara Uchida), a teenage schoolgirl who seems not to enjoy the same luxuries that her friends have, Sentarô gives the leftover dorayaki. And when an elderly and apparently none-too-sprightly lady asks if she can take up the position he is advertising for a helper, his rejection is kind and he gifts her a dorayaki.

However, this elderly lady, Tokue (Kirin Kiki) is not that doddery and she returns proffering her own sweet bean filling. It’s so delicious that Sentarô is persuaded that he and Tokue can make a good team. And they do (the film is quite heavy on the metaphor). But that would make a very short film, so naturally complications arise.

It sounds like an oxymoron but Naomi Kawase’s film is a study in understated sentimentality and no less affecting for the lack of melodrama. However, although beautifully played (Kirin Kiki especially is fabulous) and full of little funny sweet treat moments of humour of its own, the very understatement sets it up to stumble a little. It drags a bit in the middle — a slip in pacing from which it struggles to recover – and it might have benefited from being a little shorter.

The glimpses into Japanese life, history and society are really intriguing and the story twist manages to be both universal and uniquely Japanese. A subtle treat, Sweet Bean is an unusual and interesting gentle pleasure.