Flavor of Green Tea over Rice, The (Blu-ray)

One of the ineffably lovely domestic sagas made by Yasujiro Ozu at the height of his mastery, The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice is a sublimely piercing portrait of a marriage coming quietly undone. Secrets and deceptions strain the already tenuous relationship of a childless, middle-aged couple, as the wifes city-bred sophistication bumps up against the husbands small-town simplicity, and a generational sea changein the form of her headstrong, modern niecesweeps over their household. The directors abiding concern with family dynamics receives one of its most spirited treatments, with a wry, tender humor and buoyant expansiveness that moves the action from the home into the baseball stadiums, pachinko parlors, and ramen shops of postwar Tokyo.