Cherry Blossoms tonight in the snow
Despite the weather, the film tonight will go ahead at 8pm as advertised. If you’re tired of being stuck indoors, head along to the village hall and catch this rather excellent German film released last year.
Telling the story of an elderly couple facing their mortality, their relationship with their children and of unrealised ambition, it is a beautiful and moving film which I’d thoroughly recommend. If you’ve ever seen Tokyo Story by the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, you may also find some strong parallels, and indeed, it was partly filmed in Japan.
“Exquisitely made, this gentle, intelligent film is full of warm humour. … Cherry Blossoms invites us to slow down and discover the hidden layers of meaning in our own lives. It requires and solicits a certain generosity of spirit and an openness to experience, but what it offers in return is something remarkable.” (Eye for Film)
We had a huge crowd last night who braved the snow and enjoyed a really lovely evening. Several of us saw Cherry Blossoms in preview at the ICO screening weekend last year, and we all agreed that it was perfect for the film society. It’s nice to know that our judgement is right! I lost count of the number of extremely positive comments we received at the end; I think it was certainly the strongest reaction to any film we’ve screened. If you want to add anything to this blog item, please do. We hired it through the Block Booking Scheme of the British Federation of Film Societies.
For those of you who missed the film, it is available from the Dogwoof store on Amazon. I’d certainly recommed it. It doesn’t seem to be available from Lovefilm.
Born in 1955 in Hanover, a large part of Doris Dörrie’s education was in the USA, and also included the film school in Munich. Her first feature came out in 1983, but it was with the warm comedy Men… two years later that she achieved her first major success with over six million admissions worldwide.
Cherry Blossoms emerged while conducting research on Ozu’s great masterpiece Tokyo Story, and is a remarkable piece of work on the subject of bereavement, families and transience. We’ve never shown any Ozu, so maybe with the retrospective currently on at the BFI we should seriously look at doing so next season. There’s a good piece by Ian Buruma on Ozu in today’s Guardian.
The film she made before Cherry Blossoms, How to Cook Your Life is a documentary about the Zen chef, Ed Brown, and is also available from Dogwoof. It looks rather fun.
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