Late Spring (1949)

Ozu's Late Spring is perhaps the most striking film I have ever seen about the relation between father and daughter: Ozu focuses on the quiet tenderness between the two. How often do films capture that particular closeness between members of a family? I mean: closeness that bears no hint of neurotic claustrophobia. There is also another unusual thing that sets Ozu's films apart. Rather than delivering a bleak, pessimistic image of modernization, his films show people dealing with rapid changes; even though he shows the lack of understanding that may occur between generations, he never seems to be inclined to force upon us a verdict on "the modern life".  

Noriko is in her mid 20's and her widowed, professor father worries about her. She should get married, it's about time, he thinks. His scheming sister is also eager to marry her off. But the father also appreciates the life he has with his daughter. Both of them seem to thrive in their present situation. Many scenes chronicle their routines, their feeling at ease in their home. But there is this obligation, this social expectation. As a way of talking her into marrying, he tells a lie: he announces that he will re-marry. Through an encounter with a family friend in a bar, we learn that Noriko is extremely opposed to the idea. But why is she so disgusted? Is the disgust a rationalization of her grief? -  Some has interpreted the film in psychosexual terms, so that an undercurrent of the tensions would revolve around repulsion and sex, but I don't know. A suitor, the professor's assistant, is presented to Noriko. They seem to enjoy one another's company (we see them on an American-looking bicycle ride), but Noriko does not marry him (the circumstances remain open-ended). A new suitor appears. He is said to look a bit like Gary Cooper. Like in Early Summer, we never get to see this suitor (very successful move).

Setsuko Hara, who plays in several Ozu film as a woman named Noriko, is brilliant. In one of the films, she goes to see a noh play with her father. The camera lingers on the play, the audience. Suddenly, Noriko notices something, the woman her father is supposed to marry. We see the sadness in her face; anger, perhaps, as well. That's a stunning scene.

Many of the central feelings in the film are only alluded to, shown in their indirect expression. The loneliness they both experience when their living situation changes remains a private thing: they cannot show it to the other. They put up a brave, smiling face and go through with what they see as the things to be done. So what is the film about? It seems wrong to say that it is about two people who do something they do not want because they want to comply with a set of socially accepted standards. The film seems to explore different meanings of 'family', what it means to take care of one's parents and that there might be a point in one's life at which there are certain things one has to let go of. Rather than working with dichotomies (traditional/western) Ozu gives us a nuanced pattern of emotions, decisions and perhaps also confusions. This makes it, I think, wrong-headed to label the film as a story about what somebody wants or does not want.