The Taste of Tea

Director: Katsuhito Ishii

2004 / 143min / DCP

Playing in a sterling new transfer, Ishii’s third feature is a uniquely gonzo take on the Japanese shokin-geki (literally: “common people drama”), focused on the daily affairs of a family, the Hasunos—hypnotherapist father, animator mother, aspiring rock star grandfather, incurably horny teenaged son, and a nine-year-old daughter who’s haunted by a vision of her gigantic doppelganger—who’ve newly relocated to rural Tochigi Prefecture, though what they find there can’t quite be described as “the quiet life.” Ishii, here fresh from contributing the anime segment to Kill Bill: Vol. 1, renders the mundane and the insane as inextricable in this riot of surreal images and bravura set pieces, with the result something like the mutant offspring of Yasujirō Ozu and Nobuhiko Obayashi.

Presented in a new HD master supervised by the director.

Distributor: Film Movement