Sightlines · reception

How The Taste of Tea was received

2004 · Katsuhito Ishii · The Taste of Tea on Sightlines

The arc

It opened the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in 2004 to warm but modest notice, then spent years as a hard-to-find import — before the streaming/Letterboxd era slowly turned it into one of the most beloved 'hidden gem' Japanese films of the 2000s.

What’s debated

The perennial split is over its 143-minute amble: detractors call it meandering and shapeless, while devotees insist the unhurried drift IS the point.

Its footprint

The image of a giant girl looming silently over the countryside is the film's calling card — endlessly screenshot, posted, and used as shorthand for 'surreal Japanese cinema' online.

Where it stands

A cult comfort-movie on Letterboxd — the 'if you know, you know' recommendation that fans press on anyone who loved gentle, strange Japanese family films.

Did you know? Director Katsuhito Ishii made this right after directing the anime sequence in Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) — about as sharp a tonal U-turn as a filmmaker can pull.