Rentaru Famirii

Weirdly, as far as I know and as of this writing, this Japanese movie has only received a real release in Finland. Not the most lucrative market with a population of only 5.5 million. Then again, after seeing this movie, I get why no-one wants to try to market this. That can't be the easiest thing.

The basic idea is good on paper, but the movie doesn't quite deliver. At times its kind of clumsy and it changes genre mid-movie in a way that is not really satisfying. There are nice emotional moments here, but as the pacing in the film is weird, they don't quite hit as hard as they could.

At the same time, this is an outsider view into Japanese culture, so I might also be missing things, but this didn't receive much attention in Japan either.

On the positive side, the movie does contemplate the complexities of modern life nicely. People are finding it harder to connect even though (or because) we live around more people than we could possibly ever know.

The movie is presented in three episodes and the final one works best. It requires the build-up and discussion of the previous two episodes to do what it wants, but the movie probably should have emphasized things differently.

The theme of the movie is interesting enough for me to wish more people would have an opportunity to see it, but I can't really imagine an audience for this.