The Taste of Tea
In the rural outskirts north of Tokyo, the Haruno family’s eccentricity goes hand in hand with its creative pursuits. Grandfather Akira Todoroki (Tatsuya Gashuin) is an artist who loves to sing and tease his grandchildren. Father Nobuo (Tomokazu Miura, "Perfect Days") is a hypnotherapist while mother Yoshiko (Satomi Tezuka) is working on her first anime project in years. Uncle Ayano (Tadanobu Asano, "Ichi the Killer") is a sound engineer trying to avoid mixing the birthday song his brother Ikki Todoroki wants to record professionally. Meanwhile teenaged Hajime (Takahiro Sato) is pining for the girl who got away when he’s not playing Go with his father and his little sister Sachiko believes completing a flip on playground bars will rid her of the giant version of herself that’s always watching her and only she can see in “The Taste of Tea.”
Laura's Review: B+
Writer/director Katsuhito Ishii’s ("Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl") unclassifiable 2004 film is receiving a 4K restoration rerelease from Film Movement and, with its mixture of warmth and whimsy, deserves rediscovery. This sprawling family tale follows its various members down their own artistic paths, the Harunos reconvening for meals and a third act bereavement which brings unexpected joy.
We open on Hajime running through a lush green field, the train taking the girl he never got the courage to speak to away. In the film’s first of many surreal touches, a miniature train will emerge from the boy’s forehead, leaving a hole like the one in his heart. Back at the family home, Sachiko sits on the front step, her own face four times her height watching her on the horizon to her left, while the frosted window to grandpa’s room on her right always slams shut just as she glances its way, a game of peekaboo. Sachiko’s giant self happens to be reminiscent of her uncle Ayano’s childhood vision of a bleeding tattooed man who began appearing to him and it was his gymnastic act that rid him of it in weird circumstances, in a haunted forest as he gathered eggs. That day, Ayano had an overwhelming need to defecate, and when he found a half buried, oddly large egg, chose that object to aim at (what we find out that Ayano didn’t was that that egg was actually the skull of a Yakuza breached by a bullet hole).
Indicative of the rambling aspect of his film, Ishii then segues back to two of Hajime’s odd experiences, The Soba Noodle Shop Incident and The Convenience Store Incident. Ayano will run into an old, now married flame and have an amusingly awkward conversation before heading to the beach, where a blond, mohawked dancer (Kaiji Moriyama) might have the moves Yoshiko is trying to choreograph with grandpa for an anime character, so he brings him home to dinner. Back in the recording studio, we’ll learn his ex is married to a coworker and that Ikki’s ‘Oh Mountain’ birthday song just might be a hit. Grandpa spies on Sachiko as she tries to master that flip and Hajime falls for the new girl in school, emboldened by Aoi Suzuishi’s (Anna Tsuchiya) membership in the school’s Go club to perform a grand romantic gesture in the rain.
There are so many quirky little details throughout Ishii’s film, like the tuning fork grandpa keeps in a breast pocket, or the amazing revelation of just what Yoshiko’s been working on in the family kitchen. Cinematographer Kosuke Matsushima (camera department on Kurasawa’s “Ran” and “Dreams”) favors composition over camera movement, most shots static and centered, but capturing moments of natural beauty in the landscape or a human formation of a Go board. At 143 minutes, the film is a bit long, especially when it continues after a natural, moving and artistic climax, but “The Taste of Tea” is as full of satisfyingly conflicting flavors as its titular beverage.
Film Movement releases the 4K restoration of "The Taste of Tea" in select theaters on 5/8/26. It is also part of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts' UNIQLO Festival of Films from Japan.
