Edited by Nicola Carbonara
Sentaro bakes typical Japanese sweets, dorayaki, in a city kiosk. He has to work hard every day to repay a debt for life. He is a lonely man, who has decided to shut himself off from the world, and the only company he tolerates is that of a young girl without means, to whom he gives the sweets that have failed perfectly. His life goes by in a kind of resigned daily routine, when suddenly the elderly and lonely Mrs Tokuhands disfigured by leprosy. Her red bean jam is the most delicious Sentaro has ever tasted and soon Mrs Toku starts working in the stall.
These three solitary figures end up crossing their destinies in a delicate and indelible way. The backdrop to it all is the dorayaki kitchen, which becomes a poetic narrative around the characters who soon begin to weave an important bond.
The film, shot by Naomi Kawase, taken from the book by Durian Sukegawa stage name of Tetsuya Sukekawa, cleverly shows how cooking made for work is different from cooking nourished by pleasure and the power of feeling. Presented at Cannes in 2015, the film features in the cast Kirin Kiki, Masatoshi Nagase, Kyara Uchida.
Once again, Japanese cinema recounts with refined essentiality, without rhetoric and with precision and lightness, simple yet extraordinary dynamics, masterfully dosing the fairy-tale tone with the dramatic demands of the story.
And yet, in a context where loneliness and drama reign, the long sequences of dorayaki preparation or the suggestions given by the shots of the cherry trees in blossom soften. The images and sensations they evoke speak louder than the dialogues that seem to be hidden in the beauty of living in a simple kitchen. Cooking and the art of preparation become the occasion for establishing a friendship that unites three different generations. The context for creating a family unlike any other also becomes one of authenticity and beauty, of serenity and a newfound zest for life.
English 
Italian