Yoko (Yo Hitoto) is a young Japanese writer working on a biography of a Taiwanese composer, Wen-Ye Jiang, who had his heyday in Japan in the 1930’s. Assisting her in her research is Hajime (Tadanobu Asano), an obliging friend who works at a small book store and invests his free time recording the sounds of commuter trains. Yoko’s many excursions to Taiwan have yielded an unplanned pregnancy and a boyfriend whom she refuses to marry for fear of being trapped in his family’s business of manufacturing umbrellas. Yoko’s father and step-mother are quietly troubled by this news but can only watch over her from a distance, conscious of her free spirit and independence.

Hsiao-Hsien Hou’s Café Lumière premiered at a festival commemorating the centenary of Yasujiro Ozu. The film was introduced to the public as a deliberate homage to the Japanese director, especially his signature work, Tokyo Story. Plot-wise, there is little else to Hou’s story beyond the summary above. As in Ozu’s body of work, what fills the frames are the gentle observations of character and relationships, of the volumes that are left unsaid.

Having read a number of critical essays and reviews of Café Lumière, it seems that Western critics have had a vastly different take on the character dynamics compared to mine. Inter-generational tensions are certainly a common thread between Ozu and Hou. However, the generational gaps of Ozu’s time are not quite the same today — the gap is ever-present but no longer impossible to bridge. There is hope in that closure.

Some reviews cited the lack of eye contact between Yoko and her parents as a sign of remoteness or even alienation. It must be understood that Japanese families are not as overtly touchy-feely as their Western counterparts, as a matter of custom. Affection is displayed not through kisses, hugs or even eye contact. Yoko’s father is unable (or perhaps unwilling) to voice his concern over his impetuous daughter’s untimely pregnancy, but shouts his love by giving her extra potatoes from his bowl of nikujaga which is Yoko’s favorite comfort food, a dish that she associates with home. In a way, silence is his kind acknowledgement that Yoko has and always will do things her own way.

There are many who saw an unrequited romance between Yoko and Hajime, which I personally think is getting way ahead of the story and blindly shoots past Hou’s hopefulness that stems from unrealized potential. What these two lack in ambition or direction is compensated by humanity, spirituality and trust — qualities that have long been missing from the jaded and disaffected youth of Japan. There is an uncertainty about where their futures lie (there is an exquisite moment when a train carrying Hajime trundles past another train carrying Yoko, both in the same direction yet eventually parting ways) but the growth of their friendship is lovely to behold. Hajime is the first person Yoko calls whenever a private revelation strikes her. When she falls ill, he cooks for her and candidly shares his artwork for her to see and interpret.

Ozu used trains to represent industrialization, modernization, westernization and perhaps urban alienation. Hajime’s digital collage of a fetal-sized version of himself in the centre of a “womb of locomotives” was seen by a number of critics as a nihilist, despairing vision of youth trapped by change and the passing of time. I don’t share that perspective: the fetus may look a little sad, but he is comfortably enveloped by the network of trains that seem to radiate out to infinity. He is wearing the pocket watch Yoko gave him, like a compass to guide him on his way.

Wen-Ye Jiang (1910-1983) is a real composer and the music heard in Café Lumière are indeed his works. Born to Chinese parents in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, Jiang wrote pieces that were a hybrid of Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese and European influences. The tides of political turmoil tore at his allegiances and relegated his music to historical obscurity.

It cannot be an accident that Yoko is played by the half-Japanese and half-Taiwanese Yo Hitoto who has shuttled back and forth between both citizenships since birth. As a hit J-pop star — a brand of celebrity and Japanese pop culture that is (ironically and inevitably) in vogue amongst Taiwanese youth — Hitoto has found her own balance between the two worlds, that thing which eluded Jiang in his time.

The confluence of identities exists also with Hou: he is a Hakka whose adopted citizenship is Taiwanese. It seems sad yet typical that his films have found a more appreciative audience (and funding) abroad than at home. How fitting then that he should find a kindred spirit in Ozu, whose work Hou reportedly discovered only later in his career. As such, Café Lumière is not a slavish or formalist imitation, but rather a complementary companion that stands on its own.