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Movie
Poster for Café Lumière

Café Lumière

2004 · 103 min

Quiet, observational, and gently meandering, like watching everyday life unfold with a warm, nostalgic gaze.

Overview
In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.
In the UKNo streaming, rental or purchase options known.
In your watch list

How it feels

Written by AI. It can be wrong.

Tone
  • melancholicstrength 2 of 3
  • warmstrength 2 of 3
  • earneststrength 1 of 3
Pacing
slow-burn, 1 of 4, from slow-burn to relentless
Attention
demanding, 4 of 4, from background-friendly to demanding
Themes
  • family
  • identity
  • isolation
  • memory
  • parenthood
Places
  • big city
  • home
  • workplace
Era
contemporary
Audience
adult
Form
None
Content intensity
  • Gore none
  • Language mild
  • Violence none
  • Sex none
All scales, 0 to 10
Scales, 0 to 10
ScaleValue0 to 10
Action1
Horror0
Humour2
Realism9
Romance2
Tension2
Darkness2
Complexity6
Emotional weight5

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Where to watch in the UK

No UK streaming, rental or purchase options are known.

Streaming data from JustWatch.TMDB

Details

Genres
drama
Directed by
Hou Hsiao-hsien
Written by
Chu Tien-wen, Hou Hsiao-hsien
Starring
Yo Hitoto, Tadanobu Asano, Masato Hagiwara, Kimiko Yo, Nenji Kobayashi, Yôko Hoshi, Keiichi Asada, Yukio Endô
Cinematography
Mark Lee Ping-Bing
Runtime
103 min
Country
Japan, Taiwan
Languages
English, Japanese

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