The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (dual format)

Part of the BFI's The Ozu Collection, Yasujiro Ozu’s beautiful domestic drama is piercing portrait of a marriage coming quietly undone in post-war Tokyo.

Made the year before his career defining masterpiece, Tokyo Story, Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice is one of Yasujiro Ozu’s most beautiful domestic sagas, a subtly 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 clashes with the husband’s small town simplicity, and a generational sea change in the form of their headstrong, modern niece sweeps over their household.

Ozu’s expert grasp of family dynamics receives one of its most spirited treatments, with a wry, tender humour and an expansiveness that moves the action from the home, to the baseball stadiums and the shops of post-war Tokyo.

Director; Yasujiro Ozu

Cast: Shin Saburi, Michiyo Kogure, Koji Tsuruta

Special Features:

• Re-mastered at 4K and presented in High Definition for the first time in the UK
• Feature-length audio commentary by critic and Asian-cinema expert Tony Rayns
• Alternative unrestored audio track
• The Mystery of Marriage (1932, 34 mins): educational filmmaker and pioneering female director Mary Field draws peculiar and poignant parallels between the mating rituals of humans, animals and mould in this eccentric, entertaining educational film
• The Good Housewife “In Her Kitchen” (1949, 9 mins): the fourth wall is shattered in this imaginative public information film, filled with good advice for kitchen users - whether they have a refrigerator or not