Dir. Doris Dörrie, Germany, 2009, 127 mins, some subtitles Cast: Elmar Wepper, Hannelore Elsner, Aya Irizuki
Review by Philippa Bradnock
'An apple a day keeps the doctor away', says Rudi Angermeier every day to his wife, Trudi, or anyone else he happens to be with. The apple is packed for him as part of his lunch by Trudi, and is habitually given away to his work colleague. Dörrie neatly encapsulates a larger theme of her film within this one device – the reassurance of carefully circumscribed domestic routine and companionship, and the undermining of that routine and reassurance.
So Trudi offers the apple, certain that Rudi eats it, and later Rudi offers a home made packed lunch with apple to his scornful son, Karl who doesn't eat the apple either. Rudi hasn't kept the doctor away. He is terminally ill, but does not know yet. The news is broken to Trudi in the opening scene of the film, and she convinces the wary Rudi to make a trip to Berlin to visit their adult children, and perhaps to Tokyo to visit Karl, which she has always wanted. They get to Berlin, but Trudi dies unexpectedly and Rudi resolves to visit Tokyo alone.
In Berlin Trudi and Rudi are isolated from their self-absorbed children and video-game-playing grandchildren, none of whom want to make time for them and who argue in the room next door about who should entertain them. Their selfishness is frustrating and poignant, but also an easy move for the film because we know what they don't – that Rudi is dying and they have chosen to spend their last visit in bickering resentment. This portrait of an adult family attempting to connect while keeping their distance from each other feels a little forced in places. The children are unnecessarily unforgiving of their parents, particularly so when none of them attends Trudi's funeral in her home village.
In the second part of the film Rudi visits Karl in Tokyo and befriends a young Japanese Butoh dancer, Yu, with whom he travels to Mt Fuji. D ö rrie intersperses handheld camera with some long sequences of static shots of the environment, which at times feel like a promotional video extolling the delights of the destination on the flight there. At these points the film is gauche and formal, and Yu's dancing provides the antidote in an unexpected celebration of uninhibited movement. This duality reflects the duality of its characters: Trudi is both her dancing and her quiet acquiescence. Rudi is a curmudgeonly businessman and eventually also a dancer on the slopes of Mt Fuji.
Despite feeling contrived in places, Cherry Blossoms is a touching depiction of grief, both Trudi's grief for her dying husband and Rudi's grief for his dead wife. There are some truly beautiful moments, and Rudi's desire to enact his final, bizarre celebration of his wife's life gives the second part of the film a positive drive to balance Trudi's fear of death and desire to mend relationships which overhangs the first.
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