In these days of ubiquitous movie prerelease news and hype, it's harder to remain a blank sheet going into the theater — unless you totally block out everything but the title.
Still, walking into a screening of Yuki Tanada's family drama "Shijukunichi no Recipe (Mourning Recipe)," I thought I might be in for a film about a woman finding the key to her messed-up life in the kitchen. That is, a feel-good foodie movie, of which the Japanese film industry has baked dozens.
But Tanada, who made her feature debut in 2004 with the offbeat sex comedy "Tsuki to Cherry (Electric Button)," never stays completely on genre rails, while breaking seemingly iron-clad narrative rules in the name of emotional honesty. Also, instead of playing God with her characters, meting out rewards for the good and punishments for the bad, she tends to see them and their various sins in a more forgiving light.