Beijing Watermelon

Overflowing with warmth and unpredictable cinematic invention, this humanist gem from Nobuhiko Obayashi unfolds on the outskirts of Tokyo, where a Japanese grocer (Bengal) becomes a kind of benefactor to a succession of struggling Chinese exchange students, extending a compulsive generosity that crosses cultural boundaries, but which may go too far when he begins putting others before his own health and livelihood. As always, Obayashi stuffs each frame to the max with incident and eccentric experimentation, here in the service of creating a rich, vivid sense of a bustling multiethnic community.