Family Snapshot

"Tokyo Story" is a static and glacially paced film, with the camera consistently below the eyeline of a person sat on a mat on the floor. Slightly dowdy, dusty interiors, shot from the disregarded far sides of rooms, lit by diffused sunlight and un-shaded bulbs predominate.

I've never seem Kabuki theatre before, but assume that the quietly effective use of the almost unchanging expressions on the mother and father's faces, is what gives the power to their responses to the bumptiously, offhandedly graceless behaviour of their children, whom they've travelled a long distance to Tokyo to see.

There's genuine heartbreak in the moments when the preoccupation of in-laws and high-minded social probity mean that the elderly parents are essentially homeless for the night, and simply work out for themselves where they might best be housed.

It's a very simple moral universe, but a wonderfully restrainedly drawn one.