AllMovie

After losing his father and his will to carry on, a suicidal 22-year-old embarks on an eye-opening journey of self-discovery in director Claude Gagnon's intimate family drama. After Ken awakens to discover that he has somehow survived a plunge from a bridge that by all accounts should have ended his life, his desperate mother enlists the aid of her estranged brother, Takuma, in shaking her son out of his current funk. An internationally renowned potter whose eccentric nature couldn't set him farther apart from Ken's late father, Uncle Takuma is an unpredictable outsider who lives by his own indecipherable moral code. When Ken arrives at his uncle's home and finds himself greeted by a disorienting blend of sake, art, sexual tension, and intrigue, the sense of wonder and curiosity that sadly seemed to wither away following the death of his father is gradually resuscitated by his mysterious new surroundings. The title of the film refers to a centuries-old method for firing Japanese pottery in a kiln.