Picture Bride

Picture Bride
by Kayo Hatta

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DVD details

Actor: Akira Takayama, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Tamlyn Tomita, Y?ko Sugi, Youki Kudoh
Director: Kayo Hatta
Writer: Kayo Hatta
Producer: Cellin Gluck
Producer: Dana Satler Hankins
Producer: Diane Mei Lin Mark
Writer: Diane Mei Lin Mark
Producer: Eleanor R. Nakama
Writer: Mari Hatta
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-06-01
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Miramax Home Entertainment

DVD Reviews of Picture Bride

DVD Review: A "Comfort" Movie!
Summary: 5 Stars

I seen this movie originally on W TV Network, and all I knew was it was a mail order bride story based in Hawaii. I did a search and was thrilled to see Amazon had it. It has a well written storyline, a remarkable cast, beautiful scenery and it develops into a wonderful love story. It is truly one of those movies you will never part with, as it is easy to see it is a story birthed in the heart.

DVD Review: The past revisited
Summary: 5 Stars

This movie is representation of what life was like on the sugarcane plantation of Hawaii. You have the love hate story between the couple and the visual of the working life of sugarcane. The accuracy was great...the tin can lunch pail used were exact...the hierarchy everything. I remember this as a child of grandparents who did work in the sugarcane fields and life on the plantation. Great movie and well acted!

DVD Review: Pretty as a picture
Summary: 5 Stars

I stumbled across "Picture Bride" on accident, but now that I have seen it I am surprised that it doesn't have more of a reputation. This is a beautifully produced, beautifully photographed and beautifully acted independent film, featuring one of the final film appearances of the great actor Mifune Toshiro (Yojimbo).

I first heard of the term "picture bride" in a much more lighthearted movie, Flower Drum Song. I was only vaguely aware of the history, and while I new that Hawaii has a large second, third and fourth generation Japanese population, I never really knew why. The men originally went over for work, slaving away in the sugar cane fields, and when they saved up they sent money back home for a wife to be arranged for them.

"Picture Bride" is essentially the story of two women, Riyo (Youki Kudoh from Mystery Train) and Kana (Tamlyn Tomita from The Karate Kid II). 16-year old Riyo is fresh off the boat, being brought over to Hawaii under false pretenses. Her new husband used a friend's photo, and is actually older than Riyo's father. Kana, on the other hand, was pleased with her husband, but many years working the sugar plantation has made them hard, driving a wedge between them. The two bond and become friends, while Riyo learns to live with the old man she is now married to, hoping to save enough money to return to Japan.

I was deeply impressed with how director Kayo Hatta handled the characters. It would have been so simple to take the easy road, to set whites against Asians, and plantation owners against the abused workers. Or to make Riyo's husband a monster who lied to bring her far across the ocean. But none of these things happen. There is good and bad on all sides of the line, and most people are just trying to make the best out of their various situations.

The cultural aspects are handled beautifully as well, and I really enjoyed the attention to detail such as in the appearance of a yurei, a Japanese ghost. Some of the history may be a little difficult, such as why having a parent die of tuberculosis was such a great shame.

"Picture Bride" is mostly in Japanese with English subtitles, but some English is spoken as well. It is evident that Tamlyn Tomita does not speak Japanese very well, so her lines in that language are limited. Mifune Toshiro's appearance is small, but wonderful. He plays a traveling benshi, a narrator to the silent samurai films popular at the time.

DVD Review: Picture Bride is Picture Perfect
Summary: 5 Stars

The story behind the making of the "Picture Bride" is almost as fascinating as the film itself. This is the work of first time Director, Kayo Hatta, who, when she developed the idea and applied for funding, was still a student! You would never have a clue about the difficulties she faced in making this film, or that it was crafted by anyone but a seasoned professional, if you did not listen to her interview on the DVD disk. Produced on a shoestring budget, "Picture Bride" is only the second independent film to be made in Hawaii.

The film focuses on two couples. Both wives were "Picture Brides", meaning their husbands selected them based on photographs. Photography was a new technology. In fact, it is not unlike Internet dating services today, where images are conveyed on computer screens, but at the time this was totally new. And like the Internet, no one was above deception. Ultimately this meant that prospective brides/grooms were not always what were expected.

Husbands and wives did grueling, dangerous work in the cane fields, marriages between total strangers so far from home were often harsh, and dreams and expectations often died along the way. Twenty thousand such marriages took place in Hawaii between 1908 and 1924. The stories were based on interviews conducted by the director with still-living "Picture Brides". The characters of the two women were based on the personalities of the director's grandmothers.

This novice director is absolutely outstanding, the film is magnificent to watch in the incomparable setting of Hawaii, the actors are superb, and it has captured the authentic feel of what it must have been like to be a "Picture Bride" arriving in Hawaii from Japan in the early 20th century. I look forward to seeing what future masterpieces this talented director will create.

DVD Review: Accurate depiction of Japanese Picture Brides
Summary: 5 Stars

This is a surprisingly accurate account of what picture brides went through as they ventured out of Japan to marry Japanese laborers living in Hawaii who worked in the cane fields and pineapple plantations. It was a hard, grueling life, and quite often the men were much older than the brides. Japanese laborers were treated cruelly by the Portuguese lunas, which spurred them to earn enough to get out of their contracts and start their own businesses. The harsh life motivated Japanese to make life better for their offspring; education was and still is emphasized. Features Tamlyn Tomita of THE JOY LUCK CLUB fame.

Description of Picture Bride

Highly acclaimed by critics everywhere, this memorable story of passionate love is set amid the breathtaking scenery of a tropical paradise. With only a picture in hand, a beautiful young woman leaves behind all she knows for the far-off islands of Hawaii -- and an arranged marriage with a man she has never met. Though she initially regrets her decision, in time her new life on an island sugar plantation is filled with unexpected discovery and joy. Featuring Youki Kudoh (MYSTERY TRAIN) and Tamlyn Tomita (THE JOY LUCK CLUB), PICTURE BRIDE was the winner of the Audience Award for Best Dramatic Film at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

The first feature by Hawaii-born filmmaker Kayo Hatta, 1995's Picture Bride takes us into unexplored story territory in its tale of a young Japanese woman (Youki Kudoh of Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train) who leaves her home in 1918 to become the mail-order wife of a sugar plantation laborer (Akira Takayama) in Honolulu. Her first shock is discovering that her husband is actually 20 years older than his photograph; after that, life just becomes hard as the intensity and dangers of plantation work eclipse all joy. Hatta achieves an admirable authenticity in her portrait of the island community and the ghosts it (literally) harbors; she also gives us a strong sense of racial and class divisions that crackle like live wires through Oahu's booming industries at the start of the century. Tamlyn Tomita is excellent as the woman who becomes Kudoh's closest ally and friend in this new world, and the late Toshir? Mifune has a memorable, small part as a traveling narrator of silent films. This is an original, fascinating, and touching work. --Tom Keogh

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