Doris Dorrie's Cherry Blossoms is both a tender tale of cultural crossings and a double portrait of grief.
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01/16/09
Cherry Blossoms (2009)
82
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:51
Fresh:42
Rotten:9
Average Rating:7/10
Consensus: This mature and eloquent meditation on grief and loss sports measured performances and moments of humor.
Theatrical Release:Jan 16, 2009 Limited
Box Office: $293,708
Synopsis: Doris Dörrie (HOW TO COOK YOUR LIFE) directs this drama about an older married couple in love. Wife Trudi is the only one who knows that her husband, Rudi, has a disease that will kill him. In... [More]
Starring: Elmar Wepper, Hannelore Elsner, Aya Irizuki, Birgit Minichmayr
Director: Doris Dörrie
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Reviews for Cherry Blossoms
Top CriticThere's a grace to it all, and moments of oddball poetry will reward patient viewers.
01/22/09
The bluntness of the script doesn't attain the ethereal quality it's striving for (Japanese cinema favours inscrutability, a cultural lesson that seems to have been lost in translation here), but it's still oddly absorbing.
04/03/09
Sometimes a quiet whisper is more compelling than the loudest shout. Cherry Blossoms is a gentle, maudlin tale of love, loss, family ties and the fleeting nature of life.
04/03/09
It is a seldom-told story in an essentially youth-oriented, escapist movie industry, but when it is told sublimely well, as it is by Ms. Dörrie now, and by McCarey in 1937, and by Ozu in 1953, it becomes a film for the ages.
01/21/09
Top CriticThe film's soggy visuals end by reducing the plight of the grief-struck central figure to the stuff of overly prettified kitsch.
01/12/09
Doris Dorrie’s Cherry Blossoms translates a foreigner-in-Japan experience much better than Sofia Coppola could.
01/14/09
Exquisitely shot and initially absorbing, but it often drags and, ultimately, feels contrived and overstays its welcome at an excessive running time of 2 hours and 7 minutes.
01/30/09
Cherry Blossoms is an exquisitely and delicately crafted film about love, loss, and a kind of spiritual healing.
03/17/09
With exquisite performances, engaging camerawork, and a compassionate story that cuts directly to bone, Blossoms is a riveting, perceptive feature film...It's an incredible motion picture.
03/05/09
Cherry Blossoms is both austere and garish, simultaneously dry and sentimental, tightly repressed and extravagantly expressive, bourgeois and bohemian. It's a seesaw, but [director] Dorrie finds the balance.
02/26/09
Top CriticA beautiful tissue-paper piece of art that falls to shreds should you so much as blow upon it
01/15/09
Tokyo's bustling downtown has never looked so vibrant and distinctive on film, and the titular blossoms are an eye-popping metaphor for the film's approach to life.
03/06/09
It's a gentle lesson in facing life's hardships with acceptance rather than grief.
03/06/09
Doris Dorrie's bittersweet film is a story of mourning and the futility of trying to recover something lost.
10/18/08
The movie’s conceits are just barely endurable, but the sharpness of Dörrie’s eye -- for Tokyo’s electric night, for Fuji’s iconographic landscapes, for cherry blossoms -- sustains emotion even when story logic fails.
01/20/09
Top CriticThis portrait of an aging couple is a deeply rewarding, heartbreaking, utterly worthy successor to two films which inspired it: Ozu's Tokyo Story and Leo McCarey's great, forgotten 1937 Make Way for Tomorrow.
01/15/09
Unpredictable and compelling, this draws parallels between Japanese and German cultures in interesting and moving ways.
04/03/09
A surprisingly deep tale about a middle-aged German couple discovering love on the brink of death.
10/18/08
Cast is spot-on, with craft package to match.
02/13/08
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February 08, 2009:
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