Select Japan invites you to the perfect summer afternoon screening, Katsuhito Ishii's warm and wonderfully surreal The Taste of Tea. The screening will be introduced by indepedent programmer and Garden Cinema Team Member Ronja Blight.

Filmmaker Katsuhito Ishii takes a break from the post-Tarantino excess of such highly-stylised outings as Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl for this low-key look at an eccentric family residing in a quiet countryside town just north of Tokyo.

The Haruno family is a five-piece clan living the simple life in Japan. The summer sun shining gently down, this quiet quintet is transformed into a six-piece when urban-dwelling uncle Ayano (Tadanobu Asano), a successful music producer, arrives to visit his family and confront his feelings for the ex-girlfriend who married another man after Ayano moved to the city.

As the lazy days pass by, each member of the family is followed in a series of episodic vignettes.

Cast:
Maya Banno, Tadanobu Asano, Takahiro Satô, Tomokazu Miura