CHERRY BLOSSOMS – Reviewed by Will

The story of Cherry Blossoms, even as it’s outlined on the back of the box, sounds rather contrived: Rudi, a German man nearing retirement has a terminal illness (that common nameless, symptomless cinematic affliction which I’ll call melodramatic narratosis) and his wife Trudi (hey, their names rhyme, it must be fate) is the only one who knows the prognosis. She doesn’t think he can handle it so she doesn’t tell him. Naturally, while the two are enjoying a beachside retreat, she (inexplicably, of course) drops dead herself, never revealing her secret. It’s left to the widower to fulfill his wife’s dream of seeing Mount Fuji in Japan, just in time for the cherry blossom festival, “a celebration of beauty, impermanence and new beginnings.” That last quote comes direct from the blurb on the DVD case.

To say I wasn’t expecting much subtlety from Blossoms would be an understatement. In fact, during most of the first 48 minutes, I was desperate to shut the movie off. I stuck with it only because I had agreed to write this review. The film is in German, a language I’m largely ignorant of, so I’ll admit that the original dialogue might have had more poetry in it than the subtitles suggest. And you’ll get some beautifully composed images, to be sure. Just keep a sharp lookout and have your thumb resting on the pause button. Director Doris Dörrie cuts away from her best shots so quickly they might as well be subliminal. She seems to prefer lingering on clumsy handheld shots and background details (i.e. billboards) clearly meant to hammer home her new agey point.

But as I implied, the movie does improve significantly after Rudi finally reaches Japan to visit his son who works there. Suddenly the movie backs off from spelling everything out and instead relies a little more on more elegant metaphors, particularly with a young butoh dancer he befriends in a park. But I attribute the renewed energy in the second half of the story mostly to the quirkier elements of modern Japanese culture, making a comparison with Lost in Translation fairly obvious. I wish I could advise you, gentle reader, to simply jump ahead to the 45-minute mark and proceed from there, but the story really is anchored in the impenetrable peat moss of the first act and you’d be adrift without it. You should probably just skip this and rent Yasujiro Ozu‘s classic Tokyo Story, which Dörrie was probably paying homage to. –  [DVD]