---
product_id: 53367514
title: "Cafe Lumiere [DVD]"
brand: "hsiao-hsien hou"
price: "RM286"
currency: MYR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 10
url: https://www.desertcart.com.my/products/53367514-cafe-lumiere-dvd
store_origin: MY
region: Malaysia
---

# Cafe Lumiere [DVD]

**Brand:** hsiao-hsien hou
**Price:** RM286
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Cafe Lumiere [DVD] by hsiao-hsien hou
- **How much does it cost?** RM286 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.com.my](https://www.desertcart.com.my/products/53367514-cafe-lumiere-dvd)

## Best For

- hsiao-hsien hou enthusiasts

## Why This Product

- Trusted hsiao-hsien hou brand quality
- Free international shipping included
- Worldwide delivery with tracking
- 15-day hassle-free returns

## Description

Cafe Lumiere [DVD]

## Images

![Cafe Lumiere [DVD] - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51KpFBPOBBL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    An enjoyable homage that's not slavish emulation
  

*by J***Y on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 December 2015*

I've read all the other reviews and I think whether one is positive or negative about this film depends on whether one appreciates and enjoys the kind of films made by Ozu This film is explicitly stated to an homage to Ozu and one should therefore expect a gentle style of observation of a small number of individuals, including a family unit, going about their lives and the environment within which they do so. Because I love the films of Ozu, I found no barriers to my enjoyment of this film, replete with long slow takes and a story which slowly emerges from the dialogue between the characters. Again just as in Ozu's films, there is the observation of differences between the generations in attitudes to life's events such as a pregnancy out of wedlock. And just as in Ozu's films, there's usually something red in most shots! All this doesn't mean that Hou Hsaiao-hsien is slavishly copying Ozu, he brings his own distinctive and modern slant to the proceedings, as with Yoko's friend obsessing about trains, recording their sounds and constructing and manipulating complex images of them on his laptop. A very satisfying film but not if the viewer needs a painting by numbers approach to plot and character development.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 3.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Beatiful film, poor presentation
  

*by L***S on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 August 2012*

This is a review of DVD technical aspects, not the film on it.Amazon product details promise "Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 1.77:1". But specification on the sleeve reads "16:9 Letterbox" and so it is - a picture in the middle of your screen, taking up about half its size. And even on such a small screen the image quality is quite poor. This needs a TV screen up to 42" and a DVD player with a powerful PQ enhancement. At first I thought it's an artistic stylization, some kind of tribute, that would dissolve after the credit sequence. It didn't...Another issue is subtitles - English, yes, but hardcoded and with a font making them illegible when background goes bright.And sound quality wasn't impressive either, far from it...So, the disc quality itself would get a clear 1-star rating. Still I don't know the technical limitation of a source material and after all let's be grateful such films are available at all. Hence the extra 2 stars.Really, after the initial resentment eased off, I put the disc back into my player and it took me just a few minutes to forget all about the poor transfer quality, such was a beauty of this film. So, don't let yourself be put off by grumblers like me and go for films like that, whatever the quality of their presentation is.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    The master would have approved
  

*by F***F on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 November 2013*

Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao Hsien is a critically acclaimed auteur whose work is maddeningly unavailable on DVD. Of his 20 films only three are currently being offered at prices collectors can afford. Can someone (Artificial Eye, are you reading?) please give us his films from the 80s/90s preferably in a couple of cheap box sets? The Boys From Fengkuei (1983), A Summer at Grandpa's (1984), A Time to Live, A Time to Die (1985), A City of Sadness (1989), The Puppetmaster (1993) and Good Men, Good Women (1995) all won prizes at major film festivals and it is criminal that we are denied a chance to see them. As it is we have only Three Times (2005), Flight of the Red Balloon (2008) and the film under review here, Café Lumière. Commissioned by Japan's Shochiku studio to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Ozu Yasujirō's birth, the film was the first Hou made outside Taiwan and is an homage to the master of minimalism truly worthy of the name. Of course, it helps hugely that Hou's outlook is very similar to Ozu's anyway, but in Café Lumière he really does take the themes of Ozu's austere post war masterworks to their logical conclusions.Ozu was a director primarily concerned with the world as seen through the eyes of the shomingeki (domestic family drama) and from Late Spring (1949) through to his final An Autumn Afternoon (1962) together with screenwriter Noda Kōgo he charted the social transition that took place in Japan following World War II and the resulting American occupation. He saw family as the center of Japanese society. Once tight and very protective of their own, families became looser after the war. Children (especially girls) received increasing freedom to go their own way without the traditional need for discussion or consensus. Each Ozu film saw the same themes centering on generation conflict being explored again and again. The films became increasingly spare, static, stark and despairing at (what Ozu thought of as) the deterioration of family values and the consequent transformation (break up?) of Japanese society. Late Spring centers on a father-daughter conflict with the daughter initially refusing to be married off, but it ends up a celebration of traditional values as they both accept their roles - she as a new wife and he as the single father who must stand alone. 12 years later An Autumn Afternoon finds Ozu in a much darker more cynical mood telling virtually the same story but including the advent of ugly new materialism and the significant secondary character of a drunken failure who ruins his daughter by holding on to her for too long. The film's bitter shōganai (`it can't be helped') ending is a far cry from the poised moving final shots of Late Spring.In Café Lumière Hou takes this gradual disintegration of family life even further so that the film is in effect a shomingeki without the binding sense of home. Yoko (Hitoto Yo) is a young student/writer living alone in a Tokyo apartment. During a visit to her parents in the country during ōbon (the traditional summer-time period where family members get together to pay respects to the spirits of dead relatives which are said to come alive during this time) she reveals that she is pregnant with the baby of her Taiwanese boyfriend who she has no intention of marrying. She states her intention to have the baby and raise it on her own. Family relations are not tight. Her father (Hagiwara Masato) is silent, only capable of sitting, brooding and boozing. Her `mother' (Yo Kimiko) is not her biological mother. It's later revealed that the real mother left Yoko when she was four, giving herself up to a religious cult which is not specified. This could be a large religious organization like Sōga Gakkai, or perhaps a more sinister cult like Aum Shinrikyo - the organization responsible for the 1995 sarin gas subway attack. Mass public support for such religious groups is held by many in Japan to be symptomatic of a nation lacking moral backbone. Hou stresses the significance of the trauma of Yoko's childhood separation from her mother by featuring her nightmare and the book (Maurice Sendak's Outside Over There) which possibly explains it, linking her abandonment with the imminent arrival of her own child. Her new mother is not a bad sort and recognizes the need for the father to talk to his daughter about her future. But of course, the two say nothing to each other when they are left alone. In a fashion typical of many relationships between father and children in today's Japan, meaningful communication has all but broken down. Yoko takes solace in her work (researching the life of Taiwanese composer Jiang Wen-Ye whose real life widowed wife we get to meet and whose music permeates the soundtrack) and in her friends, a tempura cook (Kobayashi Nenji) and a bookshop owner named Hajime (Asano Tadanobu). He has an obsession with trains and recording the sounds of their movement which Yoko in turn gets caught up in.As a long term resident here in Japan I can verify that in the film Hou gives us an accurate picture of modern society where the importance of family often gives way to the importance of friends. Like many young people here Yoko can't talk to her family even if she wants to, preferring her freedom and the support of Hajime who is offered up as a possible future partner. Key to the film are the numerous shots of trains and the computer program Hajime has designed, especially the picture of Yamanote Line trains arranged in a circular design around a foetus in the middle of a black hole. As we know from Ozu, trains denote the restless impermanence - the transience - of all things and in this film the city (the Yamanote Line is the circular line that loops around central Tokyo) becomes the surrogate parent for Yoko and her densha otaku (train nerd) possible partner. Of course we could also read it that the foetus is Yoko's baby and the trains represent her. She could well be transient impermanence personified.I haven't seen enough Hou films to say if the mise-en-scène of Café Lumière is typical of him or not though some critics do say it is. It certainly does bear a resemblance to his next film, Three Times and (more relevant to the brief) the influence of Ozu is all-pervasive. With cameraman Mark Lee Ping Bin, Hou retains Ozu's preference for the long static take with little or no movement of the camera. When the camera does move it is in little pans either left or right. Cutting is the 180˚ kind as evidenced by the way Hajime's bookshop is seen first from the door and then later from the shop back. Yoko's family home is established in the same manner. The trademark Ozu low camera frames the room squarely with kotatsu (heated low table) firmly center of frame. Then the shot is reversed completely from the opposite direction. `Pillow shots' are not heavily evident, but the shots of train tracks are obvious examples which function as transition devices in a way the great man would have approved. Ozuian ellipsis of both time and space is much in evidence. Most obvious is the way Yoko leaves her home. She says she's going to borrow a bike and goes to a train station to look up an old friend who is asleep. The next thing we know she's in a coffee shop back in Tokyo. The ellipse tells us everything we need to know about the ennui she feels at her home-life and the fact she wants to escape it as quickly as possible. Spacial ellipses occur where characters talk to people who are off-screen with Hou (like Ozu) choosing to let us exercise our imaginations rather than simply showing us everything. The whole feel of Café Lumière is one of simple, subtle and delicate restraint. This may or may not be a Hou mainstay (judging from Three Times, I'd say it is), but it certainly does concur with Ozu. As other reviews posted here show, there are many for whom the film is so subtle that it appears to be about nothing at all. Actually, it taps into the confused transience of modern Japan with remarkable acuity. I recommend you watch closely and carefully because this film does work a spell over you in its own very quiet way. Ozu would have approved.This ICA Projects disc is a model of its kind. The images are clean and very sharp (aspect ratio: 16:9) and the sound is well-balanced. The subtitles are also letter-boxed properly which is a good thing - they don't fall off the bottom of the screen like they do in some Artificial Eye discs I have bought! There are no extras which is a shame. Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns provides the subtitles, but it's a pity he couldn't add a commentary as well. He has probably done more than any other western critic to get Hou's name more recognized as his reviews for Time Out testify. Let's hope his efforts lead to more of his films being made available soon.

---

## Why Shop on Desertcart?

- 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016
- 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories
- 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price
- 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members)
- 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection
- ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews

**Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.com.my/products/53367514-cafe-lumiere-dvd](https://www.desertcart.com.my/products/53367514-cafe-lumiere-dvd)

---

*Product available on Desertcart Malaysia*
*Store origin: MY*
*Last updated: 2026-02-20*