Doris Dörrie's Cherry Blossoms – Hanami (which won the Best Film Golden Space Needle Award at SIFF last year and is opening in theaters this week) is, at first glance, the king (and the queen and the court jester and the jack of hearts and even the dirty kid who brings the king another turkey leg) of the stereotypical festival-type movie—sad, pretty, specifically designed to crush you. Fresh off the assembly line at the Meaningful Foreign Film Factory.
Old, happy German couple Rudi and Trudi live the world's most adorable German life together. In their tiny-town cottage, in the gold and green countryside, everything is ironed and folded and routine, but not in a faded, depressing way—just a comfortable, we-are-old-Germans-and-this-is-how-we-do kind of way. There is sleepy sunshine, there is a running duck, there is a bushy brown cat. Here, Rudi, let me help you put on your sweater! Thank you, Trudi! I shall now eat a crunchy apple!
You can feel the fucking heartbreak looming.
Okay. So. Trudi finds out that Rudi is ABOUT TO DIE and decides, with his doctors, not to tell him (I'm not totally sure that's how health care works, but, um, 'kay). Instead, she just tries to convince him to go do fun stuff. And Rudi's like: "Oh Trudi, we can do fun stuff after I retire next year!" And Trudi is all: OH SHIT, SINGLE TEAR, TRICKLE TRICKLE.
Specifically, Trudi harbors secret desires of going to Japan and looking at the cherry blossoms ("I can't imagine seeing anything without my husband—that would be like not really seeing it") and—and here's where Cherry Blossoms sets itself apart—studying Butoh, the fucked-up and heart-rattling Japanese avant-garde dance form. Then they go to Berlin, and there's this whole devastating part about not being able to relate to your adult children ("I can remember them so well as children, but now I don't know who they are"), and THEN, spoiler alert kind of, TRUDI FUCKING DIES!!!
Now Rudi is alone. And now the movie really starts. His utter confusion, his pilgrimage to Tokyo, his exploration of Butoh and its panda-bear eyeliner under the wing of a homeless Japanese girl (the movie would be equally affecting if it was just the Butoh scenes, minus all the manipulative, old-people-dying tear-jerking) will leave you—if you are me—feeling like someone's been digging around in your brain with a dirty grapefruit spoon. Because that's its job. Film scientists engineered it that way. Thanks a lot, film scientists. Can't wait for SIFF. Jesus Christ. 
