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Sweet Bean
The film centres around Sentaro, a middle-aged manager whose business takes off when he hires an eccentric 76-year-old woman who specializes in making dorayaki pancakes.
24 January 1936, Chiba, Japan
28 March 1985
15 July 1966, Miyazaki, Japan
28 June 1974, Mie, Japan
15 January 1943, Tokyo, Japan
15 February 1956, Tokyo, Japan
January 03, 2017
Sweet Bean is a film that does its conventions right but gives nothing impactful as a result.November 15, 2016
Echoes of classic Japanese cinema resound all over Sweet Bean, but its tugs at the heartstrings feel calculated in a way that Ozu's and Naruse's never did.April 07, 2016
Ultimately Kawase is more interested in charting emotional and sensory landscapes than in thinking through any narrative thread, yet there's something to be said for the movie's sincerity and simple beauty.August 08, 2016
A subtle treat, Sweet Bean is an unusual and interesting gentle pleasure.March 18, 2016
A delicate little fable that creeps up on you. It seems slight at first, but it's held together by a performance from the veteran actress Kirin KikiApril 07, 2016
Ms. Kawase's sweet, slow film -- very slow, I'm obliged to say -- becomes a meditation on solitary lives lived at the margins of society; on old age, and on the urgency of telling our stories, which may sometimes include recipes.March 18, 2016
The movie, beautifully shot and acted, earns its ultimate sense of hope by confronting real heartbreak head-on, and with compassion.April 07, 2016
Kawase handles the material delicately and skillfully, and Kirin - a one-time ingenue actress whose first important film was in one of the early "Tora-san" movies - hits all the right notes.December 13, 2016
Sweet Bean senses how even the tiniest change in the basic ingredients of one's life can yield considerable rewards.April 08, 2016
Its sentimentality is tempered by the elegant restraint of the fine lead performances.August 09, 2016
Sweet Bean's gentle, quiet drama shares DNA with the work of Kawase's compatriot, Hirokazu Koreeda. Sweet by name, sweet by nature.