Rick’s Reel Recommendations #6: 3 Films About Aroha

RICK'S REEL RECOMMENDATIONS | COLUMN | AROHA / LOVE

Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickylaitheokperson | Contributing Columnist

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These films are in a Letterboxd list here: https://boxd.it/Hjkx6/detail

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Make Way for Tomorrow (McCarey, 1937)

Is this really the kind of “Aroha” that we want to think about, Ricky? A Great Depression-era dramedy about two elderly parents spending one last night out together before their home is foreclosed and they are sent by their burdened children to separate retirement homes in different states? Mileage may vary, especially during the first half of this film which sympathises with the banal annoyances that the mother and father awkwardly intrude upon their youngins’ lives. But movies about the love between our grandparents just really don’t show up at all - so give it up for yer’ elders, folks. The remaining thirty minutes during their last date, free of any actual conflicts, is earnest and starry-eyed, with members of the public showing them care and mercy, and thus raising a curious concern: that exhibiting kindness to random strangers is a much less emotionally involving responsibility than supporting a deeper, frustrated, custodial connection with a family member.

The Taste of Things (Trần Anh Hùng, 2023)

Titled the ‘The Pot-au-Feu’ overseas (the way nicer name), this potpourri of sensuously expressive culinary gestures between a chef and his personal cook in late 1880’s France is one you can practically lean into and catch the scents of. When I saw this at the Bridgeway cinema a couple years ago, in a packed theatre full of clientele all a good few decades older than I am, I could hear audience members around me sigh and gasp and lick their lips at the sights of shucked oysters, the crisp of a sliced truffle, caviar spooned onto the back of a hand. Dodin Bouffant doesn’t express his love very well through words — though who ever could, if said love was Juliette Binoche? — but if his love language is through the intricate disciplines of the cookingof cooking process, then along with ‘Babette’s Feast’ (1987) and ‘Big Night’ (1996), this makes for one of the most seriously romantic films about food that there’s ever been.

Night is Short, Walk On Girl (Masaaki Yuasa, 2017)

The best part of love is the frolicking. No plans etched in stone, just the spontaneity of the night. Masaaki Yuasa (‘Tatami Galaxy’, ‘Mind Game’) offers here a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it masterwork of 2010’s animated cinema about the greatest night out you’ve ever had, with all the sober, drunk and hungover phases that share equal wisdoms. So much careful, fussed-over detail in eye-popping colour — the glow of a traffic light, the pinkish shades of raining koi, the swollen lips bulging from spicy hotpot, the splash of sliced ginger root as it hits a pot of boiling cola — is all rolled seamlessly into one symphonic sweep, so that even when the narrative is resetting, and even when the story drifts back towards characters you might find a bit annoying, and even when you can’t buy into the blushing romance of that meet-cute… the pulse is still there. ‘The night is short — walk on, young maiden’: I finished highschool in 2017 and wish I could’ve made it my yearbook quote.