AN

At seventy, Tokue is sure of herself, thanks to her secret recipe for exceptional dough for dorayaki, a traditional, irresistibly delicious Japanese sweet cake filled with red bean paste. In her mind, there is no doubt: Sentaro, the lonely dorayaki vendor who doesn’t like sugar, must hire her. The idea turns out to be good, because once Tokue gets involved, the little shop’s sales take off. While the old lady teaches her boss to “listen to the beans,” she can’t hide her secret for very long. Shown at Cannes this year in the Un certain regard section, An is an adaptation of a novel by Durian Sukegawa, starring the adorable Masatoshi Nagase and Kirin Kiki. It’s a sweet, heady fairy tale, celebrating patience, sharing and tolerance with gentle sincerity. Naomi Kawase (Still the water) seizes the opportunity to venture happily, with her usual delicate touch, into feel-good movie territory. But she doesn’t over-sweeten things, and includes touching reflections on exclusion while focusing, as always, on the power and depth of the relationship between humans and their surroundings.