Tokyo Kyodai

The Ozu-esque title (it means 'Tokyo Siblings') is supposed to alert you to the fact that this picture about the end of a brother-sister relationship is yet another 'homage' to the old master. What it lacks, of course, is the least hint of Ozu's wry and playful humour, along with anything to match his formal skills and worldly wisdom. The characters are young people who have lost their parents. Yoko waits hand and foot on her older brother Kenichi, who sells second-hand books, the deeply repressed erotic bond between them is shattered when Yoko finds a man she wants to marry. Most viewers will want to give the selfish and complacent Kenichi a good kicking long before this lugubrious movie grinds to its close.