February 21: Tokyo Twilight

Tokyo Twilight

Yasujirō Ozu’s final film in black and white is perhaps the darkest, most psychologically complex of his masterful family portraits. Suffused with a wintry melancholy, it charts the devastating effects of household secrets on the lives of two sisters: the unhappily married Takako (the director’s muse Setsuko Hara) and the rebellious Akiko (Ineko Arima), a lost soul adrift in a world of late night bars and backroom mahjong parlors. When their estranged mother (Isuzu Yamada) unexpectedly reenters their lives, it sends shockwaves through the already fragile family. Even as it deals with a host of turbulent themes—absent parents, crumbling marriages, unplanned pregnancy – Tokyo Twilight achieves a quiet transcendence thanks to the director’s exquisite restraint and penetrating insight into the tangled relationships between parents and children. (Janus Films)