Cherry Blossoms

A stunning reminder of the omnipresence of mortality.

Doerrie goes beyond the "Lost in Translation" jokes about East-West culture clashes to communicate something meaningful and deep about Japanese art and thought.

Both austere and garish, simultaneously dry and sentimental, tightly repressed and extravagantly expressive, bourgeois and bohemian. It's a seesaw, but Dorrie finds the balance.

A successful novelist whose films bear the expansive plotting and telling character detail of the page, Doerrie never seems in any particular hurry to tell her tales, preferring the journey to the destination.

It's a strained but heartfelt work of muted sentimentality, obvious in its symbolism but grounded in a sense of life's preciousness and brevity. Depending on your mood and indulgence, you may weep or you may be left out in the cold.

At more than two hours, Cherry Blossoms could do with some pruning. And do husband and wife have to have rhyming names?

The best I can say for Cherry Blossoms is that it's made with love; the worst, that it's been a big hit in Germany. Yearning for Ozu, Dörrie stops off at cute, and parks.