Ritratto di famiglia con tempesta

In a relatively short time span, I've seen three films by Hirokazu Kore-Eda, and I'm planning to see many more. It seems most of his work is focused on family relations, and his films are touching, heartfelt real life dramas. The raw material for Kore-Eda's films are emotions, and the ways his protagonists express them in words and by their behaviour.

Like the two other films I've seen ('Our Little Sister' and 'Like Father, Like Son'), 'After the Storm' deals with parents, children, grandchildren and siblings. In this case, the central character is a divorced writer with financial problems, who has taken a job as a private detective to make ends meet. To keep up appearances, he pretends the job is a way of doing research for a new novel, but everyone knows there is no book.

His young son is very fond of his grandma, so they go visit her. But typhoon number 24 is approaching fast, and when the writer's ex-wife comes to the apartment to pick up the boy, the bad weather conditions prevent them from going home. They have to spend the night at the grandmother's house, just as if they were a normal family. And in a way, they almost are, during that one special night. After the storm, everything has returned to normal, except that the four of them are closer than they were before. The last shot is full of symbolism: the sun shines, but several broken and abandoned umbrellas are the witnesses of the stormy night.

It takes superior film making skills to turn such a story into a good movie. The emotions have to be measured out with care, in order to prevent it from turning into a tearjerker. The dialogue has to be natural, but at the same time not superficial. And the actors have to be completely believable. Just leave it to Kore-Eda: every scene is a joy to watch. It's those little things that make his characters so real: when his mother starts pleading him to stay the night, the writer says: oh, mother, please don't use this voice like you're almost dying. These are exactly the things mothers and sons say to each other, with a mix of affection and irritation.

The director also gives little hints and references which you only fully understand after a while. At the very beginning, the writer's mother remarks that a neighbour has moved to a bigger house. Only much later we learn that this has always been her own dream, and that she's tired of her own tiny apartment. I think it takes a second viewing to get all the tiny hints sprinkled throughout the story.

Are we what we hoped to be? And what was it exactly we hoped to be? Those are the questions 'After the Storm' deals with. There are no clear cut answers. But thinking about the questions makes this film worthwhile.

I bet we all can find the shadow of the underachieved protagonist in ourselves, as chances are really slim in materializing one's aspirations in the cruel reality. There he is: down-and-out both in career and mariage, scraping by through blackmailing strangers, yet always managing to squeeze a complacent smile on his face when meeting his family. You would presume he is leading a hopeless, listless, even miserable life, but the means by which the Japanese director narrates the story also attached a rather warm hue to the banal life of the man. In the end, what do we know about life without living it through ourselves?

Kore-eda is a renowned Japanese director for personable family dramas. His work in 'Still Walking' and 'Like Father, Like Son' (although yet to see) prove he is a capable writer when dealing with common family experiences. Marital woes, grief, father and son relationships. The list goes on. This being my first Kore-eda experience, I was unsure which angle to approach this blistering drama with. Regardless, no matter how I set my mind, it was an evocative and multi-layered drama with a masterful level of maturity. A novelist turned private detective, who is struggling for money due to a gambling addiction, coincidentally finds himself stuck at his mother's house overnight when a typhoon hits Japan. At the time the storm hits, his ex-wife and son are also there and spend the night within this claustrophobic environment.

Metaphorically speaking, the typhoon is a vivid representation of the estranged behaviour from both Ryota and Kyoko. Their differences splitting the family apart with such velocity. Yet, there is no hatred. No malice. And that is what I adore about Kore-eda's approach, it doesn't conform to typical clichés. He treats the audience like adults and executes a realistic family drama without needing any overly dramatic plots. Just two characters talking, with personable dialogue that has a surprising amount of wit, attempting to reconcile their differences for the betterment of themselves and their son. The storm acts as plot device for Ryota, allowing him to use the natural disaster to bond with his son. Then, once it subsides, life continues. A profound statement for most families.

Kore-eda explores various areas of urban Japanese culture, especially gambling and poverty, that enables this drama to be multi-layered. But what really cemented his masterful screenplay was just how it personal it was to him. Immediately the characters are bursting with dimensionality, enabling us to invest the time into their stories. Whilst also dealing with the scope of life, by indicating that "grown-ups cannot live only with love". A fascinating character study of a man who's personal ambitions get in the way of living life now. Though the narrative structure is not as fluid as the rain pummelling down from the storm, due to the abrupt transition between the first half before the storm and the second half, it still remains a rigid story.

This is helped by Abe's resourceful performance which was incredibly nuanced. Ryota is a complicated character, and Abe executed his complexions with ease. The late Kiki also gave a noteworthy performance as his mother, offering various lessons on life as she attempts to fix broken bonds within her family. Yamasaki's cinematography was gorgeous, cleanly enveloping you in Japan's natural and urban beauty. Kore-eda also frequently utilised long takes of unedited dialogue exchanges which subconsciously draws you into the drama.

Another small criticism would be the underutilisation of Kyoko's new boyfriend, whom of which could've been used more effectively to display her inner conflict for starting a new family or mending the existing bonds for the sake of her son. Small nitpicks here and there for what is a genuinely mature drama that felt both personal and personable, bolstered by sterling performances and a valuable screenplay. Am excited to see what Kore-eda has in store for us in the future. Oh, and bonus points for showcasing 'Taiko No Tatsujin' (I frickin' love that game...).

Fear that your children may mimic your worst qualities is the driving force in Hirokazu Koreeda's ("Our Little Sister") After the Storm (Umi yori mo mada fukaku), a compassionate look at the struggles of a Japanese family. Its title derived from the lyrics of an old pop song, the film is set in Kiyose, a city near Tokyo where it is beautifully shot in the housing compound where Koreeda grew up by cinematographer Yutaka Yamasaki. Ryota Shinoda (Hiroshi Abe, "Everest: The Summit of the Gods") is a novelist who has not had a story published in fifteen years and is forced to work for a private detective agency, which he claims is solely to do research for his next novel. Using his detective job to spy on Kyoko's new boyfriend with the help of his young detective-partner (Sosuke Ikematsu, "Mubansô"), he learns that she is dating a wealthy businessman who is intrusive in Shingo's life.

A gambling addict who squanders much of his earnings, Ryota's relationship with his young son Shingo (Taiyo Yoshizawa) is in jeopardy as his ex-wife Kyoko Shiraishi (Yoko Maki, "Like Father, Like Son") threatens to keep him from seeing Shingo until he catches up on his child support payments. The first time we see Ryota we are not impressed. He is going through his recently deceased father's private belongings to see if he can find anything that he could sell. It seems, however, that his father was also a gambler and Ryota's search might have been better conducted at the local pawn shop. While it is clear that he is not a role model for parenting, Ryota is man of considerable charm and Koreeda does not stand in judgment of his actions but depicts his travails with warmth and humor. We see that in spite of his dubious habits, his sister (Satomi Kobayashi) and his employer are both willing to lend him money.

With the help of his own mother, the spunky and very astute Yoshiko (Kirin Kiki, "Our Little Sister"), Ryota has his sights set on reuniting with Kyoko and Shingo. His love for his son is very real but he seems incapable of breaking from his demons, the same ones that dominated his father's life. Attempting to win back Shingo's love, he takes him out for a hamburger, buys him new shoes, and visits Yoshiko, the boy's beloved grandmother. Knowing that a typhoon is on the way, the family comes together to spend the night and to wrestle with the direction that their lives will take. "Why can't men ever love the present," Yoshiko wonders, highlighting an important message of the film, that people must accept the reality of how they really are.

While there is truth to the idea that we must accept who we are, there is a thin line between accepting your limitations and recognizing that you have the power to transform your life, to live the life you want rather than the life you are resigned to. Also, while the idea that sons will always take after their father is accepted without question, the reality in my experience is that sons will either take after their fathers or make very sure that they do not. After the Storm is one of Koreeda's best films and, as always, he elicits exceptional performances from children as well as brilliant takes by Kiki and Hiroshi Abe, but, in my view, its message is debatable.

Such a gentle, sad film. It's a story of letting a good life slip away not through a single bad decision, but by a succession of small ones, something we learn about a guy (Hiroshi Abe) only gradually. He's quite a deadbeat, gambling away money when he gets his hands on it, not paying his child support or rent, and stealing things from his widowed mother (Kirin Kiki) to take to the pawn shop. He's a hard guy to like or sympathize with, and a disappointment to everyone around him, most touchingly his ex-wife (Yoko Maki) and son.

Kore-eda wisely doesn't turn the film into a melodrama by trying to explain everything that's happened in these people's lives, but we can connect some of the dots with what he shows us. I wondered if the main character had known that his father was secretly proud of the book he had written, whether that would have made a difference in how he turned out. Maybe that's one of the saddest things, being aware of failure but seemingly unable (or unwilling) to take control and start taking positive steps again.

Kiki is wonderful in her part, shining especially in a flash of emotion where she wonders how things could have ended up this way. The moment where his son innocently asks him "are you who you wanted to be?" hits pretty hard too. And yet, none of them demonize him, and I'm pretty sure I judged him more than they did, even if his ex-wife stood up to all his BS pretty well. That's part of Kore-eda's magic, to be so incredibly gentle and accepting despite dealing with dark subjects. He also doesn't offer any excuses or a flimsy feel-good resolution. We can decide for ourselves what will happen with these characters, much as we have control over at least some of the decisions in our lives.