This is a vibrant movie, one of his few in colour, and touches on universal themes through the story of a middle-aged actor and his young mistress coming with a second-rate kabuki company to a small coastal town.
Floating Weeds (1959)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:20
Fresh:19
Rotten:1
Average Rating:8.4/10
Consensus: Floating Weeds boasts the visual beauty and deep tenderness of director Yasujiro Ozu's most memorable films -- and it's one of the few the master shot in color.
Runtime: 2 hrs 8 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: Yasujiro Ozu changes his traditional focus on the family only to recreate it among the cantankerous and meandering travels of a small time kabuki troupe. This sumptuously filmed melodrama, a color... Yasujiro Ozu changes his traditional focus on the family only to recreate it among the cantankerous and meandering travels of a small time kabuki troupe. This sumptuously filmed melodrama, a color remake of an earlier Ozu silent film, A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS, follows the troupe as they arrive at a small coastal village. The leader of the troupe, Komajuro Arashi, has ulterior motives, a long overdue visit with a former mistress and their illegitimate son Kiyoshi. The boy has seen his father so infrequently, that he believes him to be his uncle. This confusion continues as the past and present mistresses encounter each other, and a young actress from the troupe attempts to seduce and subsequently falls in love with the leader's son at the bequest of the current jealous mistress. A kind of Japanese madcap love story, FLOATING WEEDS, as with many Ozu films, is tinged with melancholy and failure nevertheless. The troupe fails and lovers are spurned, people have aged and changed, generations bristle and life must go on. [More]
Starring: Machiko Kyô, Ganjiro Nakamura, Haruko Sugimura, Ayako Wakao
Starring: Machiko Kyô, Ganjiro Nakamura, Haruko Sugimura, Ayako Wakao
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
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Reviews for Floating Weeds
Ozu's familiar combination of melancholy regret and buoyant comic gaiety is beguilingly in evidence.
Yasujiro Ozu's film is in color, and the screen compositions are incredible.
A variation on the theme of the family that pervades nearly all Ozu's pictures.
It's slow, slightly old fashioned, and one of Ozu's weaker works, but even in one of his lesser works there's still much to marvel at and appreciate.
As with much of Ozu's ouevre, verges on the melodramatic, but shows just enough restraint to prevent descent into such syrupy realms
The sheer beauty of Ozu's exquisite (and typically eccentric) compositions and the expressive use of sound tell all you need know about the characters, their emotions and relationships.
Ozu is, however, very special in his technique, which by the end of his career, had become very modest, lucid and lovely.
Like all of Ozu’s work, it’s incredibly human, and that can be a rarity in the artificial world of the cinema.
Richly atmospheric, with its expressive use of colour, lyrical cutaways, and masterly interior compositions -- predominantly shot from Ozu's trademark low-level camera position -- impressively illustrating the director's visual artistry.
A poignant tale of everyday folk; their lives, loves and losses, rendered with exquisite care, compassion and no small measure of humanity by one of the masters of Japanese cinema.
His scenes pack far more emotional punch than any of Jerry Bruckheimer's explosive special effects.
His spare, slow-moving films are not for all tastes, but once the rhythms are accepted, Ozu's work offers a unique emotional experience.
Sooner or later, everyone who loves movies comes to Ozu. He is the quietest and gentlest of directors, the most humanistic, the most serene. But the emotions that flow through his films are strong and deep.
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| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
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