Kamome Diner (2006)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Kamome Shokudō (Seagull Diner in English or Ruokala Lokki in Finnish where the drama was filmed) is the story of a Japanese proprietress who has opened her café in Helsinki, Finland to realize a dream of serving Japanese soul food like onigiri. The problem is she (Satomi kobayashi as Sachie) does not have anyone walking in through her door. The film is based on a novel written by author Yoko Mure who has a mostly female following in Japan and, given the story and the largely female cast, that is also where this film's viewership might be. Why do I tell you this? The story is the kind that is likely to spur either love or hate. Disclosure: I am much more in the former camp than in the latter.Everything here is modest, the budget, the film making, the cast of characters, which corresponds to the shokudo's space, decor and menu. The goals may be modest, but when we first walk into the diner not only are those humble dreams unrealized and, moreover, there is little prospect for the better. There is openness and space everywhere - it is Finland after all and they have their forests – but either deliberately or due to time and money constraints not much of it is seen. The viewer does not see much of the area in which the diner is located or the owner's residence or the midnight sun about which we often hear. Even the marina and market shots are kept in perspective. It is a small budget in a wide open space, which is really the state of Sachie's little business. There are not that many surnames to speak of either. She is a cat out of water. She is over forty years old in real life, but passers-by are suspicious of her and comment that she is a "little thing." She has travelled from her homeland of Japan to Finland and loneliness. Yet, lucky for her and us, if there is security in numbers she is about to receive some. Just like the Japanese in real life one often wonders what the characters are really thinking or up to. Is the emotion on the sleeve (and absent) or is there something else going on? The cast ends up sharing a kinship, which they obviously need, except not one of them is readily admitting to it until later and even then barely.Elsewhere, there are a few pieces of trivia and lingering questions including spoilers. 1- Sachie opened her doors a month ago only to see it go unused. It is so sad that after a month she only has one customer (kind of). 2- Why did Midori run away the first time the otaku spoke to her inside the café? 3- Were there mushrooms in the suitcase? Could you say Pulp Fiction? 4- Why was Masako given a cat by a stranger and why did she accept? 5- Masako speaks no Finnish and yet understood that the Finnish lady's husband had left her! 6- One hopes the café would have some Japanese sign or decoration, but there were none (see above)! 7 - It was sad that the heroine's cat had died when she was younger, no one had cared and she had felt so lonely. 8- Oddly for an independent film, the credits roll and out comes Inoue Yosui's rich voice. One night in a hotel room in Japan he was on TV talking about his favourite films. Seems he and I love the same Japanese films and director, one Yasujiro Ozu. He surprisingly closes the diner here. This might pigeonhole the film and turn off many, so please do not take it as an implicit attempt at feeding you notions of a cliché, but Naoko Ogigami hits all the notes of an indie film here. This writer enjoyed the goings-on thanks to the recommendation from Osaka, Naoko Ogigami, Sachie and Japanese soul food.

I have to agree with Shusei: This director isn't very concerned with cinema. The film doesn't speak to Japan's great cinematic history in any way. But the director is obviously very satisfied with herself. This film is emblematic of Japan's contemporary fetishism and myopia. It displays, unknowingly, a lot of the problems plaguing artistic and media discourses in Japan. There is a general sense of shallowness and lack of awareness that one notices if one is able to sit through this tripe. You get the Japanese constant and bizarre fascination with food, the lack of irony, the fetishization of and yet total disdain for and other-ing of all things "not Japanese," plus, you will observe the ghettoization and, again, fetishizing of a gender-group. This is very much a movie that is unselfconsciously and unwittingly by and for Japanese unmarried desexualized middle- aged "ladies" - a demographic distinction that is a kind of stigma created by the dysfunctions and pathologies of modern Japanese society. The film imagines that these Japanese "ladies" can escape their marginalization and branding in Japanese society while existing in a safe magical "foreign" world that is, obviously, anything but what life would be like if one moved and started a business in a foreign country. In this sense, the movie is both a product of and for masochistic Japanese propaganda.

Great Film ! Very much influenced by Finnish Filmmaker Aki Kaurismaaki. Dry humor , still and slow story of A Japanese woman trying to make it in Helsinki , running her own Diner with Japanese food. Satomi Kobayashi plays an incredible role as the main character.definitely had me falling in love with her character. A good natured film about inter-human relations.A slow film about being nice towards each other.... a humoristic sketch of events in the life of the women and her 2 other Japanese helpers , running the Diner in downtown Helsinki. Though not packed with action , this film radiates a true sense of positive human interaction. Has me longing for other work by this young director !

I found the film a bit boring and to tell the truth, fell asleep watching it on DVD a lazy Sunday afternoon.I found the acting especially by the young Finnish guy and the middle-aged Finnish woman less than convincing. Especially the "Koskenkorva" episode was a bit unrealistic, why would a woman who is depressed after losing her lover (or whatever the reason was) step into an empty diner, which doesn't at all look like it would even serve alcohol, and ask for a drink of vodka?But anyway, I just wanted to point out the careful selection of older and newer Finnish design classics used in the film. Aalto tables and chairs in the diner, the interiors of the Aalto-designed Academic Bookstore, Antti Nurmesniemi's coffee pots, the Hackman Tools series of pots and pans, Moomin books, and of course Marimekko clothes. Just to mention those I recognized before falling asleep.