Long, dull family drama
- After the Storm review by JR
The protagonist of the film is a deeply unsympathetic character . He seldom pays his child support, he blackmails the people he has been spying on as a private detective; he even steals from his elderly mother, and then fritters the money away at the race track. He is obsessed with trying to impress his young son by buying him expensive gifts, but clearly when he was with the mother of his child, he was a terrible father. Most of the film actually takes place before the typhoon, not after, and with a running time of 117 minutes, it was rather dull as nothing much happens and nothing changes after the storm.
3 out of 6 members found this review helpful.
Unsentimental family tale.
- After the Storm review by CP Customer
This is both a beautifully realised story of family dynamics and a wry examination of gender roles. It is also a film about redemption that refuses to come to any easy resolution.
The characters are very skilfully 'built' and the acting is excellent. I disagree with the previous reviewer in the statement that "nothing much happens". a lot happens, particularly during the typhoon, and subtle changes have occurred by the time we see the aftermath.
It's the sort of film that repays a second viewing.
3 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
Excellent Performances
- After the Storm review by AP
Watch this movie if only for what I thought were outstanding performances by Hiroshi Abe and Kiki Kirin, playing son and mother.
Abe's role is that of a writer, Ryota Shinoda, with a single, but successful, novel behind him, but with two problems: one is his gambling addiction and the other is the one he can't recognize - he is still childlike in his need for love and affection and being looked after, in his tendency to take risks, and in his failure to understand what personal responsibility means. This childishness dominates Abe's presentation with its sideways doe-eyed sympathy-seeking looks, its wheedling after money, the pleasure he takes in being fed, his boyishness taking a bath, his teenage gait, and Kore-Eda gives him a suitably teenage apartment as a set in which to encourage this.
Ryota has, of course, got a failed marriage behind him, and his wife, Kyoko, has both a new boyfriend (who is uncomfortably emotionally manipulative) and custody of their son, Shingo. In addition, Ryota's job as a private investigator is dull and he spices it up by not only spending his money on gambling but on a side hustle or two of his own (which of course earns him a lot more yen than his cut from his boss). In this he is assisted by his sidekick, beautifully underplayed by Sosuke Ikematsu, who is not only willing to lend him money pretty frequently but also makes sure he turns up for work and does it.
The thrust of the film's narrative is to offer Ryota's family - his wife, his son, his sister and mother - a chance of some kind of better understanding of each other. In this, Kiki Kirin is wonderful at enjoying her children as well as her freedom from her spendthrift husband who has recently died, eventually suggesting to Kyoko that perhaps she and Ryota are not really through. Besides, Shingo clearly rather likes his dad, partly because Ryota behaves pretty much like a big brother with him.
The film's title in English is clearly a metaphor in which the typhoon, which is frequently referred to and which eventually arrives, represents a moment in which the different turmoils in the Shinoda family are forced together and out of which they emerge, Kore-eda intimates, understanding each other better and with a chance of making a future together. But there is no guarantee: the narrative finishes enigmatically. I didn't immediately like this but, on reflection, it is true both to the story and to life. I think a comparison with Dickens' 'Great Expectations' is justified here: Dickens' original ending, in which Pip and Estella do not walk into the future hand in hand, but meet adventitiously ona London thoroughfare, talk briefly and separate, is much more consistent with the tone of the novel. And Kore-eda, without a Bulwer Lytton to get him to change his mind, gets his ending just right, I suggest.
I think you'll enjoy this.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.