Capturing Dad

CAPTURING DAD deals with an uncommon and quite difficult side to the growing up experience. It's about youth gaining an awareness of your parents lives, their position in the world and the difficulties they face, their mortality and following on from that, the legacy they leave behind.

Ryota Nakano's debut feature covers those issues with a great deal more subtlety and playfulness than that makes it sound, and does it concisely within the space of a mere 74 minutes. What's significant about the situation here is that sisters Koharu (17) and Hazuki (20) haven't seen their father for 14 years, since the time that he abandoned them and their mother for another woman. Learning that he is dying however, they make the journey to visit him in hospital, bringing a camera with them to take a photo for their mother so that she can laugh in his face. Events of course don't play out exactly the way they planned.

Yojiro Takita's 2009 Best Foreign Film Oscar award winning DEPARTURES comes to mind when watching CAPTURING DAD, but not so much for how it covers the rituals and taboos associated with death and funerals as much as for how it touches on the underlying family issues with a hint of bittersweet black humour. It's not as ambitious as Takita's film, nor as wide-ranging in its scope, but CAPTURING DAD is all the better for its small-scale intimacy and the matter-of-fact handling of the situation that takes its focus and tone from the young people involved.