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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
