Cherry Blossoms

Reviewer: Alan Hogue
Rating (out of 5): ****

Straightforward, unpretentious, and insightful, Doris Dörrie's Cherry Blossoms is the sort of movie I've longed to see after what often seemed an interminable parade of drek. Anyone recently subjected to the trailer for the new "Transformers" marketing opportunity (some still prefer to call them movies) and its relentless onslaught of whizzes and bangs, not to mention its lurid hotwheels color palette, surely knows what I'm talking about. But even some "serious" filmmakers seem out to get the audience, to measure their worth in how much they can make us squirm with existential dread, or get stuck in moral impasses, or cry our eyes out, or question the very basis of our civilization. Whatever the excuses, too many films feel designed to shake us up and slap us around. Meanwhile, a film like Cherry Blossoms can make you feel human again.

An elderly German couple find themselves facing their mortality toward the end of a long, conventionally quiet life. Trudi (Hannelore Elsner) is told that her accountant husband Rudi (Elmar Wepper) is dying, but she can't bring herself to tell him. Instead, she drags him to Berlin to see their children, who have no idea why their parents have suddenly decided to show up. It soon becomes clear that this family is not very close. Indeed, Trudi and her husband, having sealed themselves off in their village with their predictable life, hardly play any role at all in the lives of their children, and this sudden closeness causes problems for everyone.

When Trudi dies unexpectedly, her distraught and lonely husband decides to do what she always wanted to do, but which he always made her put off. He goes to Tokyo to stay with his son. At first the extremely conventional Rudi cannot adjust to life in another country, and he drives his frazzled son crazy. But, feeling guilty that he denied Trudi the kind of life she really wanted to have, he gradually comes to find some solace in living that life for her, and in the process learns to experience life in a way he never thought he could.

It's a wonder that so many filmmakers go so far out of their way to avoid depicting real people in ordinary situations, as if we know all we need to know about ourselves. Cherry Blossoms takes real problems from everyday life and looks at them squarely, without excessive artifice or the kind of artistic hand-waving typical of so many films. It is precisely the film's lovely, humble feel and Dörrie's light touch that makes this humane story so effective.