A very good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, once again, Koreeda has displayed here that he is one of the greatest humanist directors at work nowadays. Indeed, a lot of work has been done on the main character Shinoda Ryôta and the end-result was such a fine calibrated character. Sure, the guy seemed to be a deadbeat loser and he actually was. As a result, you might have a hard time to care about such a degenerate gambling addict obsessing about his ex-wife. I certainly did and, at some point, I was ready to give up on him. I’m not sure what bothered me the most, his gambling addiction or how he was stalking his ex-wife of how he neglected his son basically his whole life and, yet, time and time again, Koreeda would throw a scene or even a slight detail which would revive my interest in this rather hopeless character. Basically, the guy had some potential but he threw it away probably very early on but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t care for him. You might wish that he did manage to develop the other characters in a similar fashion but it was obviously not possible with such a running time, you would then need to develop this story at least as a mini-series. Still, the other characters were quite interesting, so well made and complex, especially the grand-mother. Coming back on the main character, it was also a master-move not to show what he did with this precious ink holder at the end and, eventually, you can make up your own mind. If you are optimistic, you can imagine that he will finally do the right thing. If you are pessimistic, you probably think that he will waste it with some more useless gambling. Anyway, to conclude, it turned out to be a strong realistic drama and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Hirokazu Koreeda’s work.