The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice
Ozu's personal favourite from his oeuvre of more than fifty titles is a subtle drama about class differences and tensions in a long-lasting marriage.
Tokyo in the 1950s. Taeko and Mokichi have been married for years; now they are in the middle of a marriage crisis that brings to the surface the great differences between them. Mokichi is a businessman of humble origins, with ditto wishes and preferences. He likes to smoke cheap cigarettes and his favourite dish is ochazuke, a simple dish made by pouring green tea over boiled rice. His wife Taeko is very much different. She is a classy woman born and raised in Tokyo, who is bored with her reliable but simple husband. Do the two still have something to say to each other? The arrival of Taeko’s lively, urban niece Setsuko stirs up the dormant conflict.
THE FLAVOR OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE is typical of Ozu’s style: the carefully composed images and sparse dialogue make the frictions between the spouses as palpable as possible.