Review of Sweet Bean (2015) by Walter P — 25 Jun 2016

Japanese man, Sentaro, struggles to run a small shop that specializes in making dorayaki, which are two yummy little pancakes separated by sweet red bean paste. He is working off a huge debt to the loanshark owner of the shop. Sassy mouthed school girls frequently come in to snack on the treats but one quiet girl, Wakana, is befriended by him. Wakana's single mom ignores her as she is preoccupied with finding a boyfriend/husband. Wakana's existence is somewhat isolated as she retreats to her bedroom with her parakeet, Marvy. She wants out of her home environment. On to the scene wanders a sweet, goofy, little old lady, Tokue, inquiring about a job there. Her slightly giddy behavior and eccentric remarks (about the tree leaves waving to her) and her desperate negotiation for a progressively lower wage could leave you wondering is she a semi-senile old pest he will be chasing away throughout the movie or does she get taken advantage of or is she enlightened. Well, it is the later, as there is much more to Tokue. As a girl, she was summarily abandoned by her family into a local leper sanatorium never to see or hear from them again. With time on her hands behind the locked gates and walls she made new lifelong friends and developed excellent self-taught cooking skills. After leprosy (Hanson's disease) became treatable with antibiotics the sanatorium was no longer a locked facility and she was free to wonder the neighborhood to her heart's content. She worked with Sentaro to vastly improve his red bean paste and dorayaki sales improve. After a lifetime of being a social pariah she just wanted to have a job, her first job, to enable her to just once be useful to society before she passed away. She managed to find contentment and happiness with her life, choosing not to become a bitter complaining old lady. After word got out amongst the patrons that Tokue has leprosy then dorayaki sales dried up and she leaves the shop. She is crushed because she hurt her boss. Wakana runs away from home and begins working at the dorayaki shop. She gives Marvy up to Tokue's care, but Tokue's heart could not handle caging a bird, so she let him free at the sanatorium to live among the trees. Sentaro leaves the shop to sell dorayaki from his stall in a city park.

As the film unfolder I saw it was about freedom for the characters.

Tokue - freedom from the confines of the sanatorium.

Sentaro - free from crushing debt.

Wakana - free of her home environment.

Marvy - freed of his cage.

Quiet, slow pace, minimal dialog with English subtitles but deep.