SFIAAFF: Take five

Café Lumiere (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Japan, 2004) Just like Hou Hsiao-hsien's previous movie, Millennium Mambo, this one — a centenary tribute to Yasujiro Ozu — only improves with subsequent viewings. But tonally and visually it's strikingly dissimilar from the throbbing, neon-streaked Mambo: Café Lumiere is a graceful and delicate movie, as sun-bleached as any shot in Japan, forever attuned to the crossed paths of trains and people. (One scene — in which the two main characters pass each other while riding different lines — is breathtaking.) Light but revealing comedy lurks within this casual look at nonfuturistic nooks of Tokyo, and at a pair of Japanese parents so repressed by the very traditions they uphold that they can't ever quite express their horror at the way their daughter is flouting them. If she is opaque, there's no mistaking the crushed ardor of Tadanobu Asano — no better leading man can be found in movies today. Sun/19, 9 p.m., Castro; March 25, 4:45 p.m., PFA. (Johnny Ray Huston)

The Crimson Kimono (Samuel Fuller, USA, 1959) The Japanese American male equivalent of Nancy Kwan (and her costar in Flower Drum Song), Hawaii native and nisei hottie James Shigeta was the apple mochi of my Honolulu-bound Japanese American mother's eye — the sexy symbol of Asian and Pacific Islander masculinity that countered cinematic images of sinister string-pullers or second-banana servitude. Coming off like a handsome but unpretentious cross between Rock Hudson and Tony Leung in his first film, Sam Fuller's The Crimson Kimono, Shigeta shines with his understated acting style and Ozu-rific-'n'-ready charisma, qualities that placed him at the center of a movie-house dialogue that was unfolding on the precipice of the civil rights era. True to Fuller form in its restless resistance to the social strictures (and genre confines) of its 1959 day, this starts like a classic '50s whodunit noir before picking up speed — and heart — and taking on the Little Tokyo color lines that separate Japanese American LAPD detective Joe Kojaku (Shigeta); his friend, partner, and wartime buddy Charlie Bancroft (Glenn Corbett); and the woman torn between the two, Christine (Victoria Shaw). Orientalism, cultural slumming, and interracial relationships — the ever-laid-back island boy Shigeta always made it look so easy, or at least navigable over the course of 90 minutes. Sat/18, 3 p.m., Castro. (Kimberly Chun)

Grain in Ear (Zhang Lu, South Korea/China, 2005) Zhang Lu's second feature is starkly beautiful — the play of sun and wind or the movement of an object or a person across the otherwise static frame is remarkable. Viewed as a statement about terrorism, as he intends, Zhang's merciless melodrama is equally noteworthy, for its stance that those viewed as "terrorists" are usually the ones who have been terrorized by the whims of a dominant culture. Here it is a "mere," seemingly meek Korean kimchi vendor who gets pushed over the brink by everyday sexism and nationalist prejudice. Her response? Well, I won't give it away, other than to say it has a striking impact on Zhang's otherwise motionless camera in the film's terrific last shot. As critic/programmer Tony Rayns has noted, the finale here might make Fassbinder rise from the grave with jealousy. Sat/18, 5 p.m., Kabuki; Sun/19, 4:45 p.m., PFA. (Huston)

Linda Linda Linda (Nobuhiro Yamashita, Japan, 2005) Osaka slack-master and Hazy Life director Nobuhiro Yamashita's new study of the drifting clod [sic] formations of Japanese youth culture, Linda Linda Linda, was destined for my 2005 10-best list from the moment its petulant and perpetually dozing-off all-girl high-school rock band started strumming the chords of the Blue Hearts' '80s J-punk classic from which the film takes its title. As hormonally true in its languorous pacing as it is hugely exhilarating in its triumphant talent-show climax, Linda is an emo remix of School of Rock. The postgraduate shoegazers in the audience will make perfect sense forever of its stunt-casting (Battle Royale's seductively sullen Aki Maeda and Korean cult-sensation Bae Doo-na, the agitating force behind Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), its soundtrack full of ambient drone and passing tones by Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha, and a dream sequence involving a furry rubber hand and a trip to Budokan with the Ramones. There's not a druggie in it, but it'll definitely remind you of the days when getting a "higher education" meant sneaking off for a bong hit in the woods behind the gym. Fri/17, 9 p.m.; March 22, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Chuck Stephens)

Rules of Dating (Han Jae-rim, South Korea, 2005) If this movie were made by Hollywood, it might be called Failure to Launch. Unlikely, though, that Matthew McConaughey's seduction of Sarah Jessica Parker would fall on the wrong side of date rape or that the ensuing power struggles would place both characters in the kind of trouble that can ruin lives. Far from perfect, Rules of Dating still illustrates the superiority of current South Korean cinema's approach to a genre or theme as potentially banal as romance — it never lapses into formula while charting the numerous pitfalls of one particular relationship from hell. The societal irony is that just as the film's pair of maladjusted fuckups seem on the brink of making a breakthrough with one another, they are torpedoed by busybody behavior. In the lead role, Park Hae-il possesses more screen presence than McConaughey, building on his striking and disconcerting work in previous films such as Jealousy Is My Middle Name and Memories of Murder. Fri/17, 9:30 p.m., Castro; March 25, 9:15 p.m., Camera. (Huston)