Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Series | Book | Chapter

207206

Remaking Ozu

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Café lumière

Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh

pp. 97-118

Abstract

Café Lumiere pairs the Ozu/Hou doublet with the Lumiere brothers, the legendary founding fathers of cinema. Café Lumiere, coffee shop under light, is more than a handy reference to a personal experience and an intercultural wordplay. It is also a historical conceit that offers a look back on historical phases. This chapter takes a direct approach (by way of segmentation) to note the textual correlatives, parallels, and inter-generational echoes, to reach an understanding of Hou's design in interweaving the life of a Tokyo woman with the history of cinema and Sino-Japanese cultural politics. By tracing the diegetic time of Café Lumiere, we find that Yoko's "uneventful" daily activities not only reveal epistemological clues of a young woman's desire in Tokyo, they also offer points of entry into Hou's revision of cinema and history.

Publication details

Published in:

Bettinson Gary, Udden James (2016) The poetics of Chinese cinema. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Pages: 97-118

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-55309-6_6

Full citation:

Yueh-yu Yeh Emilie (2016) „Remaking Ozu: Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Café lumière“, In: G. Bettinson & J. Udden (eds.), The poetics of Chinese cinema, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 97–118.