New from Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda – director of such ecstatically acclaimed films as Still Walking (2008); Like Father, Like Son (2013) and most recently Our Little Sister (2015) – delivers another tender, exploratory drama with After the Storm, screened at LFF in 2016.
Eschewing sentimentality, it’s a clear-eyed tale of compassion within a troubled family. Hiroshi Abe plays Ryota, a former novelist now working for a private detective agency in a Tokyo surburb. He claims his spying on cheating couples is research for a new book. But instead, he’s putting the wages towards the addiction that helped disrupt his family life with his former wife (Yoko Maki) and son (Taiyo Yoshizawa).
After his father’s death he contacts his mother Yoshiko (Kilin Kiki), from whom he’s drifted apart and begins to make his way towards possible reconciliations with both his mother and his son. Meanwhile the storm of the title – a powerful typhoon – is forging its own path towards the city.
By turns funny, melancholy and prescient, Kore-eda’s drama is – as you would expect – gorgeously photographed and performed and definitively humane, revealing moments of unanticipated beauty thrown into relief by everyday life.
