Late Spring

Most famous as Ozu’s first collaboration with Setsuko Hara, a collaboration that they would continue for more than a decade and include most of Ozu’s most famous films, Late Spring is another example of Ozu’s technical mastery in service to a quiet, intimate, familial story of change, unwelcomed, necessary, but inevitable change. I don’t quite get the emotional gut punch of A Hen in the Wind, but the small story is still affecting and emotionally involving nonetheless.

Noriko (Hara) lives...