Ageing, washed-up actor Komajuro (Nakamura) rolls into a sleepy 50s seaside town with his rinky-dink, outdated Kabuki troupe (the film's title being a Japanese term for itinerant actors). Here he seeks to reunite with former lover Oyoshi (Sugimura) and their illegitimate son Kiyoshi (Kawaguchi), who believes the old man is his uncle.
When Komajuro's sour-faced mistress Sumiko (Kyô) learns of the affair, she engineers a doomed seduction between beautiful young actress Kayo (Wakao) and Kiyoshi to humiliate the troupe master via his unwitting son - Kiyoshi's tawdry, failed romance will serve to remind Komajuro of his own. Can Komajuro exert parental authority over his 'nephew' without revealing his true identity?
Tokyo Story may be Ozu's most famous work, but the elegiac and refined Floating Weeds ranks among the director's best. A director, incidentally, whose gravestone is marked by the Japanese word for "nothing". Appropriately so: as critic Derek Malcolm points out, such was the restraint of Ozu's film-making, "it hardly seemed like art at all".
Less is so much more. As Ozu biographer Donald Richie notes: "What remains after seeing an Ozu film is the feeling that, if only for an hour or two, you have seen the goodness and beauty of everyday things and everyday people."
Floating Weeds may well concern issues of betrayal and loss, but in its refusal to moralise, affords its all-too-human characters something approaching grace. Prefaced with the fairytale like caption "Somewhere in the South of Japan...", Weeds goes about its business with a quiet dignity - chiefly distinguished by Ozu's celebrated static camera, allowing a richer degree of intimacy and contemplation.
This is complemented by exquisite framing from cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa - evoking 19th century Japanese prints - and dedicated, understated performances from the cast.
When Komajuro's sour-faced mistress Sumiko (Kyô) learns of the affair, she engineers a doomed seduction between beautiful young actress Kayo (Wakao) and Kiyoshi to humiliate the troupe master via his unwitting son - Kiyoshi's tawdry, failed romance will serve to remind Komajuro of his own. Can Komajuro exert parental authority over his 'nephew' without revealing his true identity?
Tokyo Story may be Ozu's most famous work, but the elegiac and refined Floating Weeds ranks among the director's best. A director, incidentally, whose gravestone is marked by the Japanese word for "nothing". Appropriately so: as critic Derek Malcolm points out, such was the restraint of Ozu's film-making, "it hardly seemed like art at all".
Less is so much more. As Ozu biographer Donald Richie notes: "What remains after seeing an Ozu film is the feeling that, if only for an hour or two, you have seen the goodness and beauty of everyday things and everyday people."
Floating Weeds may well concern issues of betrayal and loss, but in its refusal to moralise, affords its all-too-human characters something approaching grace. Prefaced with the fairytale like caption "Somewhere in the South of Japan...", Weeds goes about its business with a quiet dignity - chiefly distinguished by Ozu's celebrated static camera, allowing a richer degree of intimacy and contemplation.
This is complemented by exquisite framing from cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa - evoking 19th century Japanese prints - and dedicated, understated performances from the cast.