If the title music is anything to go by this will be a gentle sentimental sad little film.
Grandma is wrapping sea urchin in cucumber. The sushi preparations made me hungry for some (corn tempura anybody?) It bimbles along, amiable in-house family chat.
By about half way I've got bored by it though, even slightly irritated; the life-in-a-day ordinary everydayness has become prosaic and dramatically underdone: too much mundane chat of the "Not a lot on telly these days" variety is being slopped into that sushi.
And that sugary guitar soundtrack motif keeps smoothing in swashes of sentimental reverie; nice-ifying and prettifying up scenes as though they were meant to be meaning something sweetly sad.
I appreciate Koreeda wanting the acting to understate feelings so as to avoid melodramatic clichés; but he should be doing something more actively engaging with the screenplay. In the absence of enacted – or dramatically expressed – emotion just sticking a sad guitar in there now and again is too easy.
Koreeda – on the DVD extra – actually seems like quite a nice person; sweetly souled, gently dispositioned; smiles more than he says, but a sad touch to his looks sometimes. This film a kind of personal testament to his mother who'd died 2 years previously. And although i usually like films that feel intimate, are right up close and personal – this seemed almost like a vanity project; too narrowly self-absorbed, too self-indulgently fussy.
In the end i was glad to get away from the whole family set-up. There are times when the ordinary everyday requires a bit of a kick up the ..... This was one of them.
Grandma is wrapping sea urchin in cucumber. The sushi preparations made me hungry for some (corn tempura anybody?) It bimbles along, amiable in-house family chat.
By about half way I've got bored by it though, even slightly irritated; the life-in-a-day ordinary everydayness has become prosaic and dramatically underdone: too much mundane chat of the "Not a lot on telly these days" variety is being slopped into that sushi.
And that sugary guitar soundtrack motif keeps smoothing in swashes of sentimental reverie; nice-ifying and prettifying up scenes as though they were meant to be meaning something sweetly sad.
I appreciate Koreeda wanting the acting to understate feelings so as to avoid melodramatic clichés; but he should be doing something more actively engaging with the screenplay. In the absence of enacted – or dramatically expressed – emotion just sticking a sad guitar in there now and again is too easy.
Koreeda – on the DVD extra – actually seems like quite a nice person; sweetly souled, gently dispositioned; smiles more than he says, but a sad touch to his looks sometimes. This film a kind of personal testament to his mother who'd died 2 years previously. And although i usually like films that feel intimate, are right up close and personal – this seemed almost like a vanity project; too narrowly self-absorbed, too self-indulgently fussy.
In the end i was glad to get away from the whole family set-up. There are times when the ordinary everyday requires a bit of a kick up the ..... This was one of them.