Let’s Go, Grandma!

(Ore no yuku michi)

BAMPFA Collection

featuring

Hideki Saijo, Kinuyo Tanaka, Junko Natsu, Choichiro Kawarazaki,

A charming discovery from the BAMPFA film vault, Let’s Go, Grandma! plays like an exuberant, goofy update to Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. Kinuyo Tanaka plays the titular Grandma, who, after selling her Hokkaido property, is apparently flush with cash but newly homeless. Her grown children take turns hosting her, making extravagant performances of filial devotion with an eye to potential profit. Making use of a catalog of wacky visual effects, bracketed by gratuitous ham-fisted fight scenes, and costarring pop singer Hideki Saijo, the film is balanced by Tanaka’s nuanced performance, which delivers a denunciation of hypocrisy and greed.

Kate MacKay
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Shigeyuki Yamane
Cinematographer
  • Hiroshi Takemura
Language
  • Japanese
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 86 mins
Source
  • BAMPFA
Permission
  • Shochiku