Late Spring

Late Spring is a 1949 Japanese film directed by Yasujiro Ozu, following a widowed university professor who, believing his adult daughter will never leave home to marry while she still cares for him, invents a story about his own remarriage to push her toward a marriage of her own. Shot in Ozu's characteristic restrained, low camera style and largely set within the family's home in Kamakura, the film explores the quiet sadness beneath a father and daughter's mutual devotion as social expectation forces their household apart. It is considered the first of Ozu's so called Noriko trilogy, all starring actress Setsuko Hara, and is widely regarded as one of the defining works of his mature period and of postwar Japanese cinema generally.