While not yet proving to be quite as prolific as the great masters Ozu,
Mizoguchi and Naruse at their most busy, there is becoming something routine
about another year and another trip to Cannes for perhaps Japan's best current
working director, Kore-eda Hirokazu. There is a clear progression from his
bleakly haunting first three films, 'Maborosi', 'After Life' and 'Distance' to
a more routine playground of 'shomin-geki' (lower-middle class family drama),
moving from more complex ennui to a more mainstream exploration of various
unusual family scenarios.
'After the Storm', the most recent lover he took with him to southern
France, certainly feels like a follow-on from his previous works 'Still
Walking' and 'Kiseki'. Here, the family get-together of 'Still Walking' is
replaced by the impromptu night-in to weather the storm, with Kirin Kiki and
Hiroshi Abe reprising their roles as mother and prodigal son; and 'Kiseki's'
Koichi is replaced by Abe's Ryota: a grown man who can't move on from his divorce
from his wife and son, Kyoko and Shingo. With the cast also featuring other now
established Kore-eda 'family' members, in the form of Lili Franky and Yoko
Maki, this could all start to feel a little too familiar. Though he would not
be the first great director to embrace this approach.
Suitably unshaven, Ryota is a recent divorcee, struggling to come to
terms with his new position. A former novelist, enjoying some minor success
with his novel 'The Empty Table' fifteen years previous, he now finds himself
working as a private detective, betraying the trust of both his boss and untrustworthy
clients; gambling heavily, living alone. Not only losing his wife and son, he
has lost the respect of others, and even himself. His ex-wife can't rely on him
to pay child support; his sister believes he is only after their mother's
meagre funds; and his boss knows he is moonlighting behind his back. The only
ones showing any positivity towards him are his mother, in the form of witty
banter about how useless he has become, much like his father; his work
colleague, Kento, who begrudgingly lends him money to gamble away; and his son,
whose indifference to him is as good as he can get.
His attempts to win Kyoko and Shingo back, in his sly, underhand
manner, therefore, are never going to work. By purposefully taking Shingo to
his mother's small apartment as a typhoon approaches , he hopes to lure Kyoko
to spend the night as a family with his deceit, unable to grasp that it is acts
such as this that pushed her away in the first place. He is a man above his
station, and in pursuing his second novel, that everyone can see will never
happen, turns down lucrative offers to write more mainstream manga, as he
believes it compromises his artistic integrity which died long ago.
His profession now to watch others, Ryota has become completely unaware
of himself and the impact of his actions on those around him. Playing the victim,
he is never the bad guy. Comparisons are often made to his father, harking to
Kore-eda's previous title 'Like Father, Like Son'. Kyoko can see the future she
would be offered with Ryota, in the form of her former mother-in-law's cramped apartment
where she is forced to spend the night: As an elderly woman, left alone and
near penniless by her husband's rash actions. Whereas Ryota can only see the
past.
Eventually realising that he is only deceiving himself (urgh, I just
wrote that!), as the storm passes and the fresh morning awakes, he starts to
come to terms with this. This may all seem quite obvious and light, wondering
if Kore-eda has lost a bit of spark, getting too comfortable in his work. And
indeed, you may wish for a more dark perspective as in his earlier days. But the
realism holds, and the wit of the script raises a smile. The cast perform their
roles in a way that is believable, avoiding soap opera clichés and social
stereotypes; and the stark soundtrack steers it away from melodrama.
Yes, this is more of the same, but in the same way that Ozu remade his
own 'Late Spring' with 'An Autumn Afternoon'. The formula is working, and with
enough bite to keep it away from the daytime TV nicety, ensuring that the familial
isn't too familiar just yet.
