After the Storm (Umi yori mo mada fukaku)
(2016)After the death of his father, a private detective with a punishing gambling habit attempts to reconnect with his mother, ex-wife and, most crucially, his young son in this Japanese drama from the director of the sublime Our Little Sister. ... More
Ryoto (Abe Hiroshi) used to be a novelist, but now he's a private detective scraping together the cash to fund his gambling habit, never mind child support. Stranded at his family home during a storm, Ryoto attempts to make amends with his ex-wife and son in this bittersweet tale that screened in the Un Certain Regard programme at Cannes Film Festival 2016.Hide
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Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda ('I Wish', 'Like Father, Like Son', 'Our Little Sister')
Starring Hiroshi Abe, Yôko Maki, Taiyô Yoshizawa, Kirin Kiki, Satomi Kobayashi, Sosuke Ikematsu, Lily Franky, Isao Hashizume
Written by Hirokazu Koreeda
Flicks Review
BY Liam Maguren Flicks Writer
Whether he’s following a father trying to connect with his parents years after losing his brother (Still Walking) or a child looking to make sense of his mother and father’s recent divorce (I Wish), you can’t deny Kore-eda Hirokazu’s skill at unpicking family mechanics. But the warmth he usually brings to his films evaporates a bit with After the Storm, which follows a divorced father with a bad gambling and a toxic cling to his glory days as a proven author. The film mines a good about of subtle comedy from how much of a loser he is (the great Kirin Kiki gets the most digs as his hard-case mother), but he’s not an easy person to sympathise over.
[Mini-Review From The 2016 NZIFF]
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After the Storm (Umi yori mo mada fukaku)
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The filmmaking is so exquisite and the acting so calibrated it sticks with you. Full Review
Such is the finesse of Kore-eda's script that it builds to neither the vehement confrontation nor the comforting reconciliation that melodrama decrees. Full Review
Even long-standing fans of the Japanese filmmaker might be taken aback by the supreme subtlety of his latest, achingly beautiful ode to the quiet complexities of family life. Full Review
...touching, subtle,deftly and minutely observed... Full Review
It's a film that sticks with you. Full Review
A sublimely simple family drama from the Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda. Full Review
Kore-eda looks sensitively at the deep roots of unquenched anguish, but he constructs the characters too neatly and the situations too precisely for the drama to seem like anything but a well-meaning lesson. Full Review
Filmed and assembled with such wit, economy and precision that nothing in the film is allowed to detract from the absolute perfection of the writing and the performances. Full Review
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