Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104931 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-06-01
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Colour, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English, Japanese
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Customer Reviews

Beautiful Film
This is a really beautiful story with 'heart'. The film won the Sundance Film Festival audience award and it is easy to see why - it is beautifully shot and well acted with a cameo form Toishiro Mifune (7 Samurai). If you are interested in finding out about Hawaii at the turn of the 20th Century this gives an accurate and engaging portrayal of life on the plantations. Some subtitle sequences in the beginning but these only add to it in my opinion. A film with substance.

Harsh paradise
This first-time effort by Hawaiian-born Kayo Hatta worked for me cuz it only skimmed the surface of the potential drama of the story. It could have wound up soggy with emotion. But it failed at melodrama and what remained were sedate glimpses of a lifestyle shockingly different than the paradise promised by planatation owners and bachelor laborers to "picture brides" across the sea.

Fortune smiled on Hatta when she was talked into casting Japanese actress Youki Kudoh. Youki's in almost every scene and she easily carried the film with her nuanced, adorable performance. Her offbeat cuteness and delicacy enhanced the fish-out-of-water quality of the movie.

Youki's famous countryman, Toshiro Mifune, only appeared briefly but vividly in his second-to-last film. Speaking of brief, you might recognize Jason Scott Lee in an uncredited appearance.

This is a nice film to look at. Very colorful -- which is odd for an American film. While it took advantage of the magnificent Hawaiian scenery, it was mostly shot in the deep-green, almost claustrophobic cane fields. A clever atmospheric choice.

I particularly liked the effort to present the language situation authentically rather than turn everything into American English. Probably more than half of the dialog is in Japanese (with subtitles). Most of the English is heavily accented pidgin (remember Hawaii Five-0?) with a wee bit of Scots English and American English. If you're alert, you'll notice a Filipino dialect.

Sadly, Kayo Hatto -- who conceived, produced, co-wrote (with her sister), and directed -- did only a few film shorts since. Then, in 2005, she drowned accidently at age 47. So this is her feature film legacy. It's not deep dramatically, but it's wide in texture. Aloha, Kayo. And mahalo.