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You can stream Early Summer (1951) on Max with a subscription.

In postwar Tokyo, Noriko lives with her extended family. Although she enjoys her career and her social life, her more traditional family worries about her single marital status at the advanced age of 28. 40-year-old business associate Takako proposes, Noriko's family press her into accepting, but when her widowed childhood friend Kenkichi returns to the neighborhood, she finds her heart leading in another direction.

Instead of a heavy melodrama about societal pressure, this quiet study of independence finds profound beauty in the mundane rhythms of domestic life. Small gestures and lingering shots capture the bittersweet tension between personal freedom and the expectations of a changing nation.

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