One of the ineffably lovely domestic sagas made by Yasujiro Ozu at the height of his mastery, ‘The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice’ is a sublimely piercing portrait of a marriage coming quietly undone. Secrets and deceptions strain the already tenuous relationship of a childless, middle-aged couple, as the wife’s city-bred sophistication bumps up against the husband’s small-town simplicity, and a generational sea change—in the form of her headstrong, modern niece—sweeps over their household. The director’s abiding concern with family dynamics receives one of its most spirited treatments, with a wry, tender humour and buoyant expansiveness that moves the action from the home into the baseball stadiums, pachinko parlours, and ramen shops of postwar Tokyo.
