Rating: 
Summary: Lanterns on the Water
Review: This gentle and beautifully photographed film takes place in 1918 Honolulu, Hawaii and deals in a very real manner with the difficulties of being a Picture Bride. During this time period many young Japanese, Okinawan, and Korean girls traveled to Hawaii to be wives of men who had saved up enough money to send for them. Rijo (Youki Kudoh) finds it her only option when her father dies and a secret forces her to leave Japan. She will discover her mate Matsuji (Akira Takahami) to be much older than the picture he sent and life in the sugar cane fields not suited to a city girl. But she will also discover, ever so slowly, a beautiful place where the dead often visit the living as ghosts on the wind. She resists her life and is saving up to return to Japan while making it clear there will be no love for Matsuji. As time passes she finds a friend in Kana (Tamlyn Tomita), who lets her help with laundry she does after the back breaking work in the fields to earn money so she can leave Hawaii and return to her home. The two young women become close until tragedy strikes. Matsuji has done everything he knows to make the pretty Rijo stay and be his wife. He has even taken Kana's advice and played 'Rudolph Valentino' but to no avail. After Kana is taken away she tells Matsuji her secret and flees to the ocean for home. But Rijo has forgotten this is a place where ghosts are in the wind and she will see Kana once more. This film is about love and ghosts and will end with lanterns on the water to light the journey for the dead. As Matsuji tells Rijo, when he was in Japan he did not believe in ghosts but here in Hawaii he feels it is right. A film of great and gentle beauty filled with fine performances and lush cinematography, this is one you simply can't miss....
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