A group of traveling kabuki actors arrive in a ship to a small coastal town and announce their plays. An older actor, Komajuro, visits the home of his former fling, Oyoshi, and inquires about their son Kiyoshi, a lad now in his 20s. Kiyoshi grew up without a father, and was told by his mother that Komajuro—who didn’t want to settle down—is his uncle. Actress Sumiko, Komajuro’s current lover, finds out about Oyoshi and this pays Kayo a young actress, to seduce Kiyoshi. The couple falls in love. Komajuro is angry at Kiyoshi for being with the girl, until Oyoshi finally reveals to Kiyoshi that he is his father, though the lad is not surprised. Komajuro leaves the town once more, and boards a train, while Sumiko joins him.
Even though it is included in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies list, “Floating Weeds” doesn’t distinguish itself that much from other similar works by director Yasujiro Ozu: it is serene, calm, subtle, but also flat and somewhat boring. Ozu is able to create a quiet drama with a lot of understanding for the characters and their human shortcomings, encompassing several themes, including relations between a younger and an older generation, nomads who refuse to take roots anywhere, transience (as the movie progresses, the kabuki play attracts less and less audiences with each new performance, symbolic for how out of touch with time these traditionalists have become), and the duality of an actor’s life (in one sequence, while fishing, Kiyoshi tells Komajuro how his performance in the play wasn’t very good, hinting that Kiyoshi is telling that Komajuro’s performance to be his uncle in real life is not fooling him anymore)—but this doesn’t amount to much of an entertainment value for two hours.
The movie rises above the occasion in only three moments: the opening shot, where the lighthouse in the distance is positioned in almost the same size as a bottle on the shore; Kayo getting the assignment to seduce the young lad Kiyoshi; and the wall of rain falling on the street between Sumiko on one house and Komajuro on the other house, as they argue back and forth, symbolizing their emotional separation. The seduction segment is almost reminiscent of “Dangerous Liaisons”, and offers the best moment of the film, the one where Kayo goes to Kiyoshi, who works in the postal office, and tells him she wants to send a telegram with the words “Come outside to see me”. Kiyoshi asks her to whom she is sending it, and she says: “To you!” Indeed, irresistibly charmimg. Unfortunately, nothing else in the film repeats this high level, as the storyline quickly returns back to the standard melodrama when she admits she was paid to seduce him already 20 minutes later, yet he doesn’t mind anyway, whereas it is puzzling as to why Komajuro is so against this relationship. “Floating Weeds” is a good film that refuses to go into some more intricate plotting or greatness—save for the said three moments—and instead choses patience over competence. As Hitchcock once said, drama is life with dull bits cut out. For Ozu, this seems like the other way around.
Grade:++
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