Sweet Bean (あん (An, literally "Sweet Bean Paste")) is a Japanese drama film from 2015 directed by Naomi Kawase, starring real-life grandmother Kirin Kiki and her granddaughter Kyara Uchida. It was shown off in the 2015 Cannes Film Festival in May, and again in the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
The film's main character is Sentaro (Masatoshi Nagase), a middle-aged dorayaki maker running out of a shop in Tokyo. He frequently sees a schoolgirl named Wakana (Uchida), but things change when an old woman named Tokue (Kiki) shows up one day and asks about a job offering posted out front. Though initially reluctant to hire someone so old, Sentaro changes his mind after getting a taste of Tokue's handmade sweet bean paste, a filling for dorayaki pancakes. The story revolves around one's freedom to make choices in life and acceptance of the consequences that come with them.
This film provides examples of:
- Bittersweet Ending: Tokue is dead, Wakana has officially run away from home, and Sentaro never got to give Tokue the letter explaining why he makes dorayaki. However, Tokue left behind an inspiring message. Thanks to her words of wisdom, Sentaro has found a way to make dorayaki production his own, rather than a job forced upon him, and Wakana seems to have gotten back on her own two feet.
- Caged Bird Metaphor: Wakana owns a canary named Marvy that spends most of the movie in a cage. The scene after Tokue posthumously reveals she set Marvy free in a cassette recording is the moment both Sentaro and Wakana are free from their own prisons of responsibility and home life.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Sentaro doesn't like dorayaki. He makes it because he's a good cook, and because he has no choice.
- Dead Man Writing: Tokue's cassette message to Sentaro and Wakana was recorded not long before her death.
- Hate Sink: The dorayaki shop owner's wife. She exploits the rumors about Tokue to get her fired, and at the climax of the film, she shows up in opulent fur clothes and essentially demands that Sentaro train her clearly immature nephew, while making a jab at the cause for Sentaro's debt in the process. Her only purpose in being physically present is to make the audience pity the protagonists.
- Mono no Aware: The central theme of the film is that your path in life is ultimately up to you, and you must be prepared to take what comes, lest you let others decide your life and waste what little of it you have.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The dorayaki shop owner's nephew appears in one scene where Sentaro is forced to take him on as an assistant, then is never seen or mentioned again.
- With a Friend and a Stranger: It's implied that Wakana has been stopping by Sentaro's shop for the reject dorayaki since before the movie starts, but it is Tokue's appearance that changes everything for both of them.
- Work Off the Debt: Sentaro's motivation for making dorayaki. He used to work at a pub until he crippled a patron in an attempt to stop a dispute, and the owner of the shop paid his bail, forcing him to run it and pay off the debt with the earnings.
