Despite being one of the art cinema world’s most acclaimed filmmakers, director Naomi Kawase is a relative unknown when it comes to even the most studied cinephiles here stateside. Becoming arguably one of the most believed filmmakers at film festivals like, and particularly, the Cannes Film Festival, Kawase has amassed a career spawning some truly intriguing cinematic experiments, that simply haven’t hit a nerve with wide audiences. However, that will hopefully change with her newest, and most accessible, feature.

Entitled Sweet Bean, Kawase takes a decidedly traditional approach to this adaptation of a novel from Durian Sukeagwa, which itself looks and feels like a far cry from her last widely discussed feature, 2011’s Hanezu. The film introduces us to Sentaro, a quiet, unassuming owner of a small dorayaki shop in Tokyo. Dorayaki is ostensibly two small pancakes filled with a sweet red bean paste known as “an,” which...