I had a conversation with my friend recently about how, as a society, we rarely get a glimpse into the interior lives of the elderly. How do people spend the hours of the day as they age?
In Sweet Bean (2015) we get to meet a 76-year-old woman named Tokue (Kirin Kiki). When the manager of a local dorayaki pancake shop, Sentaro (Masatoshi Nagase), advertises that he needs an assistant, Tokue sees the sign and pleads with him to give her a chance.
Sentaro is a sad, beaten down soul, generally just a negative guy. And, like many people might, he assumes Tokue will be too weak and slow to work at the shop. He resists her offer, until one day she brings him some of her homemade sweet red bean paste. After tasting it, Sentaro is instantly swayed and decides to let Tokue come cook with him.
On day one, Tokue is shocked to find that Sentaro doesn’t make his bean paste from scratch, “how can you take this so lightly?” she asks. They wake at dawn the next day and Tokue patiently shows Sentaro how to prepare the paste. He becomes her apprentice.
What follows is a beautiful story of friendship that examines the lives of three different characters (Tokue, Sentoro and Wakana, a young girl who frequents the dorayaki shop), all of whom have been in one way or another left behind, ignored or shunned by society.
Early on, when Tokue is cooking, we see that her hands are gnarled as she struggles with precise movements. We learn that she has lived much of her life under forced segregation in a “sanatorium” because of a leprosy diagnosis. She has spent her whole life trying to escape the stigma and shame of this misunderstood disease.
There’s a scene where Wakana (Kyara Uchida), is flipping through a library book about leprosy and comes across the phrase: “We want to live in a place where the sun shines”. Tokue’s desire to work in the dorayaki shop, to walk under the cherry blossoms, to make Santoro smile, to cook a perfect sweet bean paste, is all part of her search for the shining sun in a world that can often be cold and grey. Sometimes a patch of sun is just the best you can do.
This movie is shot and directed beautifully by Naomi Kawase and leaves you feeling hopeful, even though you may shed some tears along the way (or sob uncontrollably if you’re me).
You can stream this one on Kanopy with help from your trusty library card.