Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

overdarklord This review also has some mild spoilers for the movie "An autumn afernoon", you have been warned: "Early Summer" is a movie very similar to Ozu's later work "An Autumn Afternoon" which I saw a bit earlier than this movie. Both deal with families that somewhat break up because the daughter of the family is marrying into someone else's family and you see how the family member deal with this situation. While they have a similar theme I ended up really enjoying "An Autumn Afternoon" while I found "Early Summer" rather boring, it had a little bit going on but especially towards the end it became increasingly bland. I think this comparison is very good in showing the interest I get while watching some of ozus movies ("An Autumn Afternoon and "floating weeds") and the boredom I get while watching others (Tokyo stories, late spring). Early summer pretty much falls right in between them. For comparison: An Autumn Afternoon is a movie clearly dedicated to the change the father of the family experiences while considering giving up on his precious daughter who cared for him since his wife died. There are a lot of hints in the movie about the father being fond of the good old times and not wanting to let go on some things. Ultimately all the character who are at first against change have to realize that it is the best for everyone and cannot be avoided and everyone matures in that regards towards the end of the movie. I also find nice that the daughter could not marry the man she actually wanted to marry. You know, not everyone could choose back then and this gives you a bit of a touch of realism. The movie also had a bunch of character with actual charisma. You had the friend of the father who always boasted about how nice it is to have a wife that is 20-30 years younger than he is. You have the old teacher who has a little bit of a drinking problem. You got the wife of the son who is always snapping and complaining about money. "Early Summer" on the other hand has very little of that. The focus of the story is not the old father who loses his daughter but the daughter, and the movie doesn't really have a message it tries to tell by hinting at its audience. There is no sense of maturing from any of the characters and the ending felt rather abrupt. You also don't have the magnitude of charismatic and interesting characters. The only few character interaction I found rather special where the conversations between the old school friends of the main character, some of whom are married and some of whom aren't and you got a little bit of a fighting there. So overall I would say that Ozu definitely became a better filmmaker towards the end of his life, with "An Autumn Afternoon" probably being the best of his movies. His very similar early version of the same idea named "Early summer" is a nice watch but resembles rather his earlier movies (Tokyo Story and Late spring) rather than the complex take on family life that is given in his later work. Also an Autumn Afternoon had better actors with Shima Iwashita and Marko Okada being excellent actors who establish themselves outside of Ozus movies while Setsuko Hara most famous works all seem to have centred around Ozu and I don't find her to be that good to be honest.

alexdeleonfilm Viewed at 2016 Berlin Film Festival in restored classics section.Bakushu" a mid-to-later career landmark, was one of a series of Ozu films with seasonal titles -- Early Spring, Late Spring, Early Autumn, etc. which, like most of Ozu's post-war films, deal with issues ranging from communication problems between generations to the rising role of women in post-war Japan. In this one, Hara Setsuko, Ozu's fetish lead actress, is Noriko (her usual name in Ozu pictures) who, while extremely attractive is very choosy and is getting a little old for marriage at age 28. A match is set up with a well-heeled older man -- a good prospect -- but Noriko, who has a mind of her own, will end up running off to the northern sticks (Akita Province) with a childhood friend, a widower with a child and an ex-buddy of her brother who was killed in action. The family strongly opposes this unseemly match up but finally accepts Noriko's firm decision, an early act of Woman's Lib Japanese style. Hara was an actress with a stature at the time equivalent to Katherine Hepburn in Hollywood, and her older brother in this film, Chishu Ryu, would become her father-in-law in Ozu's most famous masterpiece, Tokyo Story, two years later. Ryu might be seen as a low key Spencer Tracy, but a more subtle and tasteful actor. He appeared in 160 films in a remarkable six decade career. I can proudly say that I was once invited by him to a private tea ceremony at his home in Ôfuna near Shochiko studios. Bakushu is essential Ozu and quintessential Hara Setsuko. Setsuko, who embodied the woman every Japanese wishes he could marry, never married herself and abruptly retired from the screen in 1963, the same year that Ozu died. She then went into seclusion à la Greta Garbo, in Kamakura where most of her films with Ozu had been shot, forever shunning public appearances and refusing to grant interviews until the end. The end came this past September when Hara was ninety-five. She is famously quoted as saying that she never really liked acting but only did it to support her large family. Maybe that's why she was so utterly real on screen. She wasn't acting -- she was just t h e r e.

Cosmoeticadotcom Early Summer (Bakushû) is the middle entry in what has been called director Yasujiro Ozu's Noriko Trilogy (bookended by Late Spring and Tokyo Story). All three films feature women named Noriko (all played by Setsuko Hara), who are without husbands, and embroiled in family dramas. The names of many of the other major characters recur in the trilogy, as well, which gives the films a feeling of almost being alternate world versions of each other- ala the way comic books have 'canonical' superhero tales, and those set in alternate universes. Released in 1951, the 124 minute black and white film was written by Ozu and his co-writer Kôgo Noda, and is every bit as great a film as its two more celebrated companion pieces. The film featured many of Ozu's actors from the two other films, and in many ways is a variation on the narrative of Late Spring, which revolves around the family plotting to marry off the 'old maid' Noriko. Naturally, a suspension of disbelief is needed to believe that a character played by Hara- Japan's mid-Twentieth Century answer to Julia Roberts, aka 'the girl next door,' would have any trouble finding male companionship. And all of the trilogy films are predicated on the changing role of the Japanese family in the postwar world, where the ideas of giri (duty) and ninjo (emotion) come into conflict. The basics of the narrative follow the tri-generational Mamiya family, who all share a suburban Tokyo home. The oldest generation is wary of change, but accepts it. The middle generation takes it or leaves it, and the youngest generation are just self-centered brats. There are the mother and father, Shukichi and Shige (played by Ichirô Sugai and Chieko Higashiyama); their doctor son Koichi (Chishu Ryu), his wife Fumiko (Kuniko Miyake) and their two bratty sons, the older Minoru (Zen Murase)- about eight or nine, and the younger Isamu (Isao Shirosawa)- about four or five; and the parents' daughter, Noriko. Another son, never seen in the film, Shoji, died in World War Two, and the parents still lament and feel his absence. A missing member of the family is another Ozu standby. All of the family members share the expense of the household, and Noriko, who is twenty-eight, feels in no great hurry to marry. Yet, the bulk of the film is not devoted to this pursuit, but rather the exposition of individual character through small scenes that do not relate directly to the plot. Ozu often eschewed plot driven tales' heavyhandedness in favor of an anecdotal style that allowed things to emerge as a tale more organically, or naturally, without the contrivances that often occur in film….Ozu's films rise or fall on their little moments, when people do little things. There are scenes where the grandfather cuts Isamu's toenails, or when he tries to bribe Isamu into saying he loves him. He does it four times, but when grandpa stops bribing him Isamu gets snotty and says he hates the old man. Then the two brothers show their disappointment when Koichi comes home with a package they assume are toy train tracks. When they find out it's bread, call their father a liar, and kick the bread till the package breaks, Koichi spanks Minoru, and scolds him for abusing food- a no-no in a nation where food was still scarce after the war. Then there's a scene when the adults eat cake, and hide it from the boys, lest have to share it with them. These are the prosaic moments which aid in contrasting the greater moments. The very fact that so few other filmmakers include such 'down' dramatic times, which are nevertheless fascinating, goes a long way in explaining the empyreal heights Ozu reaches in his films.Early Summer is an unjustly neglected classic, and a great film, every bit the equal of its two more celebrated cousins in the Noriko Trilogy, which takes its place alongside Ingmar Bergman's Spider Trilogy, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Alienation Trilogy, and Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors Trilogy as one of the great accomplishments of cinema. In fact, it is probably the best of the trilogies mentioned, for it is the only one where all three films that comprise it are unequivocally great films. While it's great to be in good company, to rise above that company is even better. Ozu does, no matter where or when you watch his films.

brendastern I had seen Tokyo Story and respected it. But Early Summer is a charming, poignant and very human movie that stands the test of time. It is the story of Noriko, a 28-year-old administrative assistant who is under pressure from her family to marry. To put this in perspective, in traditional Japan, a woman married by age 25, or she was considered a "Christmas cake "-- nobody wanted it after the 25th! It is not as common in Japan now for women to face such pressure, especially since so many Japanese women are choosing to stay single, now that they have the money to be independent. However, Noriko's case would have been common up until the current generation of women.While the war is not a character in the movie, there are threads that connect Early Summer to World War II. The movie takes place in 1951, just before Japan emerged from the U.S. occupation, and before Japanese society had its great explosion of wealth in the 1960s. It is a snapshot of a time that no longer exists, although the family conflicts are universal. I plan to add Early Summer to my list of top movies and look forward to viewing it again.