Free Cake- Jane Maberry

 Why is cake such an important symbol? 

There are two very similar scenes involving cake that occur in both Late Spring and Early Summer. While the Noriko movies are all very alike, I'm interested in discussing why he has two such obviously similar scenes in  two separate movies. 

    In Early Summer, Noriko is able to buy a cake simply because she wants to. Her friend does ask her to, but Noriko doesn't seem like to type of person to spend so much money to avoid being awkward. She seems proud to be able to do this and share it with someone. She acts so casual when she's cutting it. Her body language relaxes the scene and cuts any tension that might have formed from them arguing about how much it cost. She even giggles when Fumiko is almost aghast at the price. It's a symbol of the freedom she has gained for herself working alone. 

    Her friend Aya is the one who makes the cake in Late Spring, and it has a similar correlation of freedom to her as it did Noriko in Early Summer. However, to the Noriko of this movie, it seems to represent the opposite. Because in Late Spring, Aya is the one who has that freedom. She lives in a western house and often wears western clothes. She makes the cake simply because she wants to. For Noriko, it seems to represent what she's losing by getting married. She'll still be able to buy cake, but I think it's the way that Aya does everything by herself that's so affecting. 

The scenes are similar thematically, but they way they are both filmed is very different. The kitchen of the family home in Early Summer is darkly lit, and we get almost the whole scene from the end of the hallway, so that the characters are framed by the walls on either side. The walls themselves are still very Japanese style, with paneling. The exchange between Noriko and Fumiko is made up of close ups, but it still feels warm and casual. In contrast, Aya's home is glaringly western. It's also spotlessly clean, which makes the scene feel more impersonal, even though the characters in it are supposed to be friends. 

    What is unusual about this scene is how forceful she is with offering the cake to Noriko. Is she trying to assert that she can do things by herself without being married? I had thought, just because of the cake correlation, that the two girls in each scene seemed like very similar characters, but the way that they react to the ability to share is different. Noriko's soft and welcoming personality makes her lifestyle more attractive. The portrayal of being single is much more appealing in Early Summer. Aya's forcefulness just serves to make it seem like she's trying to force everyone around her to believe that she is doing well as a single woman. But it's her attitude that makes the viewer doubt that. 

So even though the cake is a constant, and represents the same thing in each scene, thinking about the traits of each character just serves to make them feel radically different. The premise of them is very similar, but my initial thought that they played out similarly as well wasn't really correct. If you just looked at the films from these two scenes, then Late Spring would seem like a much darker movie, but in my opinion it had a much lighter ending in comparison to Early Summer. They both have similar ideas of what it means to have personal freedom, and what it means to give it up. I like that two scenes can so easily represent the themes of the whole movie. 

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