‘Sweet Bean’ achieves quiet, contemplative simplicity

[...] these decades and throughout the ever-changing styles of world cinema, Japanese filmmakers are still unmatched at achieving a certain type of quiet, contemplative simplicity.

The latest example is Naomi Kawase’s “Sweet Bean,” which is bare of excess in any form — dialogue, setting, music, melodrama — and is instead enhanced by three wonderful, understated lead performances and the director’s eye (and ear) for nature and contemplation.

Rather dour in demeanor, he serves up average dorayakis to a smattering of customers, including a few schoolgirls who try unsuccessfully to get him to crack a smile.

Into their lives walks Tokue (Kirin Kiki), a kindly, 76-year-old woman who asks for a job.

Kawase handles the material delicately and skillfully, and Kirin — a one-time ingenue actress whose first important film was in one of the early “Tora-san” movies — hits all the right notes.

Except that for Antonioni, empty spaces are a metaphor for the bleak emptiness of humanity; for Kawase, empty spaces are a clear symbol of humanity’s meaning and purpose.

G. Allen Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.