Reviewed by Holly Williams
Stars Setsuko Hara, Yoko Tsukasa, Mariko Okada, Keiji Sada, Miyuki Kuwano, Shinichiro Mikami, Shin Saburi, Chishu Ryu
Written by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu,
based on the novel by Ton Satomi
Certification UK PG
Runtime 129 minutes
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu
To coincide with their season of Yasujiro Ozu films, and their release of his most famous, Tokyo Story, the BFI have also released this later and lesser known film by the Japanese director from 1960.
Late Autumn shows a trio of aging Japanese men meddling in the love life of a beautiful widow and her daughter. The three friends of the family cheekily endeavour to get the daughter, Ayako (the almost cartoon-perky Tsukasa) married off. When she resists, not wanting to abandon her mother Akiko, the trio turn their rather amorous attentions to Akiko too (Hara, who played the role of a daughter being ‘married off’ herself in a previous Ozu film, Late Spring). By finding a new spouse for Akiko, they hope to assuage Ayako’s guilt and let her embrace conventional marriage. Sadly, they’re not very good at matchmaking and tie themselves into various knots, from which springs a gentle comedy.
Late Autumn also conveys a generational shift occurring in Japan at the beginning of the 60s (although, as a product of its times, there are still moments of grating sexism). The film can’t quite let a young girl genuinely be resistant to the idea of marriage – although the lacklustre relationship she has with a young man hardly promotes marriage as a romantic institution. And we do see the younger generation’s restlessness with tradition: Ayako and her friend Yukiko’s frustration over the idea of marriage as loss for a woman – loss of female friendship, employment, independence – does reveal the seeds of change.
Okada is cracking as this feisty friend, who both charms and sorts out the tangled trio of men by taking a no-nonsense approach to their muddled match-making attempts. A product of a new era, she’s smart, sassy and proves as capable of running rings around the old guard (teasing and tricking them into buying her dinner) as she is at straightening them out.
Ozu is known for his pared-back, restrained style, which developed throughout his filmmaking career. And Late Autumn is certainly simple (though not simplistic) in it style: Ozu eschews flashy editing or self-conscious camera movements, using long-held, static shots that characters can move around in, that relationships become refracted through. Many of the still shots are carefully framed with the also simple, clean lines of Japanese interiors, giving a palpable sense of character seen at middle-distance, moving within their physical context. With a director with such a clear handle on his material, nothing more is needed.