Difficult family dynamics, Japanese-style: Hirokazu Kore-eda's LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

The old switched-at-birth routine (Angel of Mine, The Other Son) gets an anything-but-routine telling via Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda's latest and maybe loveliest film, LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON. Even when his subjects grow as bizarre (an inflatable plastic doll come to life) or heart-breaking (how an abandoned family of children try to care for each other), as in After-Life and Air Doll, it's this film-maker's consistent ability to give us such real and specific behavior, in the midst of whatever kind of life is going on, that always seals the deal. Hirokazu (shown below) is the real thing and there is no one quite like him working in film today. His new movie -- a tear-jerker that earns the workout it will give your lacrimal sac -- does not disappoint.

The filmmaker is noted for the fine performances he seems to always get from his child actors, and he certainly does it again here, though he draws equally wonderful ones from the adults on hand. As Hirokazu has matured (he's 51 now), he seems more and more drawn to stories that resonant over generations and fairly wide-ranging themes -- from divorce and separa-tion to coming to terms with anger, forgiveness, parents who don't seem to care, even death.

In Like Father, Like Son, he is dealing with several of the above themes, as well as with the old nature-vs-nurture controversy, along with the workplace and class differences in a way that I have not noticed as strongly in his previous work. This makes his movie all the richer.

In the film, a workaholic dad (the marvelously subtle actor, Masaharu Yukuhama, above) -- who would seem, on the face of the first couple of scenes, to have a somewhat idyllic life with his lovely wife andchild -- learns that his son is not his biological flesh-and-blood, after all.

When the family finally meets the other family (above) who has raised its actual son, just as it has raised the other boy, it is clear that there is a huge difference here in everything from income to education. Most city-dwelling sophisticates will, I think, identity much more with the initial family, but Hirokazu doesn't let us off the hook nearly so easily. At first, the new family seems crass --particularly the father (above, left). But as the film flows along, this dad grows on us even more than does his wealthier counterpart.

The moms bond more easily, as women often do, I think, and even the two dads try their best. (The Japanese proclivity for civility seems so very helpful here.) What about the kids themselves? As usual, the filmmaker gets striking performances from the children (shown above and below), and we begin to see that in some ways, both sons are like fish out of water, while in other ways , they've adapted quite well.

But how will the parents adapt to all this? And what is the best way to proceed? This is key, and Hirokazu follows things along part of the way, until we understand that the dad with the biggest problem is at least trying. Will he make it all the way?  Time'll tell, and I'm glad that the filmmaker didn't tie up everything too neatly.

Instead he gives us that wonderfully real behavior, from all concerned. Watching this is a pleasure in its own right, but it also helps us follow and believe in the changes that occur, especially in our troubled company/family man.

From Sundance Selects and running two hours, Like Father, Like Son opens this Friday, January 17, in New York City at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema. The following Friday, January 24, it will open at Laemmle's Royal and Playhouse 7. The film will also be available nationwide on Sundance Selects’ video-on-demand platform, available to over 50 million homes in all major markets.

Jonathan Caouette's WALK AWAY RENÉE opens in NY--& via SundanceNow doc club

Some of us were not so pleased, back in 2004, with Jonathan Caouette's debut feature Tarnation because -- with its constant style-trumps-content and its consistent sense of me-me-me! oh-look-I'm-a-star! -- we felt it played not at all fair with his mother Renée Leblanc. We may have to eat crow now that his latest work, WALK AWAY RENÉE, is about to make its theatrical debut this week, after its North American premiere at the BAMcinemaFest this past June. (This post is a slightly revised edition of the one I posted at that time.) Fortunately, TrustMovies has a flock of crows who often fly right outside his Jackson Heights window -- they've even scared away the red-tailed hawk that had taken up residence -- and he'll be happy to get out his BB gun and share some lunch with fellow critics.)

Caouette's new film -- while it still offers mom (stylized, above, and simply vulnerable, below) as someone who can barely be lived with -- allows Renée to come across fully as as a human being worth our compassion, and even worth the caring she gets from her son Jonathan, his companion David, and Jonathan's son Joshua.

In this new film, we get the family history in a more solid, less fragmented manner than we did with Tarnation, and while the filmmaker still enjoys diddling with style, he's kept it more at the service of the story he wants to tell. When it's there, as it definitely is during a long, phantasmagorical light show around two-third of the way through the film, it arrives as almost a pleasurable respite from the turmoil that Caouette -- and the audience -- stews in throughout most of the rest of the movie.

Probably the most shocking visual element we see here (other than Renée's sad state) is how much and how badly Caouette appears to have aged in the years between films. This fellow, so full of energy, spirit and beauty in his younger days (at right), now looks so drained, tired and overweight (below) that it seems like some 28 years, rather than merely eight, have passed. But given what we see during the film's time line -- which takes us, zipping backward and forward, from Renée's early years, pre-Jonathan, to practically present-day -- this last decade in particular has been no picnic for anyone involved. In the first film, the movie-maker was happy to gaze at the camera 24/7; now he can barely bring himself to look directly at it.

If Tarnation often seemed like self-love taken beyond even mastur-batory level, Walk Away Renée is more than mere penance. It puts us in the seat next to a person with bi-polar disorder (and then some). If you've ever spent time around this sort, as I have, that weird double response of helping another person coupled to your own self-protection will quickly kick in. (Personal note: I live with my companion of 20-odd years and his 98-year-old mother, who has lived with us for the past ten years. While I would not call this living arrangement easy, by comparison with what Caouette and his companion contend -- and now, it seems Caouette's own son lives with them, too -- I consider our immediate family to be lucky.)

Back and forth in time we go, as son tries to take mom by car from Texas to New York, in the process losing her meds (one wonders if she herself did not toss them out) and try desperately to cadge a refill, while filling viewers in on family history over four generations. By the 50-minute mark, we've come full circle. And then we move ahead toward... what?

I'd have liked to have learned more about the filmmaker's companion David, whom I'm sure viewers will imagine is some kind of saint. (People have referred to me in that way, too, because I've taken in the mother of my companion. They don't realize, of course, that it is easier to distance yourself when it is not your mother because you have none of that 30-, 40-, or -- for us -- 60-year baggage that must come along with any mother-child relationship.)

I hope Caouette will continue his story -- of Renée, of his life with David, of the progress of his son Joshua (above, left). This tale would seem to beg for a third chapter, if only to see mom put to rest, and the remaining lives put to other, less stressful, perhaps more normal -- if these people have a clue as to what that word might mean -- activities.

Walk Away Renée, from Sundance Selects, opens this Friday, November 30, in New York City at the IFC Center. As for the film itself, in addition to any theatrical showings, it can also be seen on the new SundanceNow doc club, where the cost of a month of content is only $4 (or $20 for a full year!). Click the link above to find out more....

Lynn Shelton's YOUR SISTER'S SISTER: Mumblecore makes a major move forward

Lynn Shelton, last heard from in 2009 with her Humpday-- the charming but poorly premised two-straight-guys-decide-to-have-sex-with-each-other-as-an-"art-project" movie --is back this week with the equally charming, but deeper and more interesting, YOUR SISTER'S SISTER, which moves grace-fully from an opening party/memorial service featuring a large cast to a movie with only three characters, in scenes that often use but two of them.

Featuring a writer/director (Ms Shelton, shown at left) and one male cast member (Mark Duplass), both known best for mumblecore success, and two top actresses (Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt) noted for their professionalism, versatility and grace, the movie that results is often surprising, immensely entertaining and oddly believable, too. Most of all, maybe, the film is a wonderful poster child for the uses of improvisation. When I see the film again (and I will), one thing I want look for is just when that improvisation is most likely occurring (often, I'd say). According to the press materials, "vast swaths of the film are completely improvised," though it is also noted that the actors used a lot of Ms Shelton's original dialog, as well. The combination proves nearly seamless, and the three leading performers play off each other beautifully.

What makes Your Sister's Sister so beguiling and sometimes quite moving is the psychology behind these characters, together with the loss that they have all recently experienced. For two of them death is involved, for the other merely a broken relationship (of course, for the party that didn't break it, the word "merely" hardly cuts it).

There are surprises upon surprises in the course of this 90-minute chat-fest, and though these are indeed surprising, they're never shocking nor unbelievable because they all come from character-based reality. Ms Shelton has created a particular situation (which I can't go into because it's a spoiler) that in other, maybe less capable, hands would have led into territory outrageous and sitcom-y. Here, it's not. Given who these characters are, it comes off as funny, all right, but real, too.

The film is somehow slight, however; I doubt you'll be bowled over and remembering the movie for days/weeks/months after. Though it deals with some heavy-duty dilemmas, it remains perfectly enjoyable light entertainment put together by a group of professionals who hit their marks reliably and often. The biggest of these Marks is the one named Duplass (above, right), who -- after his terrific job in the so-so Darling Companion, holding his own in one of the starriest ensembles of the year -- does it again as the "sex object" (sort of) needed and wanted by the two sisters for quite different reasons. Like the movie itself, Duplass is funny and real and even pretty sexy -- in his slightly schlubby manner.

Ms Blunt, above, who is wonderful again and again (from My Summer of Love, Gideon's Daughter and The Devil Wears Prada to Wind Chill, The Great Buck Howard and Young Victoria), is, uh... wonderful again. There's an honesty about her performances, coupled to her beauty and energy, that make them quite individual and special. Ms DeWitt (below, right, from Mad Men, Rachel Getting Married, and the underseen Shut Up and Sing (aka The Wedding Weekend) brings her own special quality of tentativeness to play on everything and would walk away with the movie were her co-stars not both so solidly "there."

Your Sister's Sister, from IFC Films, opens this Friday, June 15, in New York City at the IFC Center and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center; in the Los Angeles area, look for it at the Arclight Hollywood and the Landmark Theater. (It will also open simultaneously in Chicago, DC, San Francisco and Seattle -- with a national rollout to follow.)

Asghar Farhadi's A SEPARATION: a shoo-in for the Best Foreign-Language Film shortlist

A SEPARATION, Iran's entry into this year's Best Foreign-Language Film sweepstakes, is, TrustMovies believes, almost certain to make the shortlist, as well as being among the final five films nominated, and -- he suspects, from what he's seen so far of the other entries -- very probably the winning film itself. It is that riveting a multi-generation family drama, utterly accessible to western sensibilities, and a film that will keep you on your toes right up until the last suspenseful moment. It is so good, in fact, that TM dearly wishes it were better. We'll get to why at the end of this post, where we will try our best to avoid spoilers.

Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi (shown at right, this is his fifth full-length movie as writer/director), the film appears at first to be about the dissolution of a marriage and family -- the separation of the title -- but soon evolves into much more. The mother, played well by Leila Hatami, shown below, wants the family (she, her husband and her daughter -- all clearly bright and well-educated) to move to the U.S.A. where she believes they will have a better life. (Perhaps she's unaware of our increasingly poor 99%, or maybe the family is richer than they seem.)

Her husband Nader (a terrific acting job, the movie's best, from Peyman Maadi, shown below, left) can't/won't leave his Alzheimers-ailing father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi, below, right, in his film debut), behind in Iran.

The couple's daughter -- a nice job of presenting teenage angst, in a quiet, eastern style over-layed with a religion biased against women, by Sarina Farhadi (below, and the director's own daughter) -- is angry, at first toward mom, and then later, for reasons that slowly become apparent due to the twists taken by the plot, toward her dad.

The catalyst for much of what happens is another mother/father/
daughter family that mirrors the first in interesting ways: They seem super-religious, as opposed to our three who are more secular, not particularly intelligent nor well-spoken -- and not nearly so well off.

The mother (Sareh Bayat, above, left, giving the strongest woman's performance in the film), her daughter in tow, takes a caretaker job with the first family, screwing things up in just about every way possible. When her mentally unbalanced, religious-nut husband (funny how these two qualities work together so well in this society) -- a riveting performance from Shahab Hosseini, below -- enters the picture, all hell threatens to break loose.

Questions of who knew what and when did they know it (doesn't that put you in mind of Watergate?) loom large as the film progresses, and it is when the pieces of the puzzle finally come together that my quibbles surface.

Our discovering the be-all-end-all event so late in the game is not a little annoying, particularly since we were literally right there, moments before that event happened. That the filmmaker chose to deprive us of this knowledge by cutting away at the singular moment smacks of manipulation rather than of organic storytelling. (This happens again right at the end of the film, when knowledge we might know and profit from is deliberately withheld from us.)

Yes, these characters -- all of them -- are flawed, and it is good that the filmmaker makes certain we understand this. But the loose ends here are awfully long and untidy (Is there a law in Iran that a doctor cannot testify as to the state of her patient at a certain day and time?  Was that missing money stolen, misplaced or what? And by whom?) Truth and justice may be murky, all right, but here it is simply made more murky by the filmmaker's choices.

All this does not sink A Separation, which is among the most western movies made by an easterner that I have seen (only Certified Copy beats it in terms of western sensibility). The performances are splendid, the dialog on target, the sense of place and space (below) captured beautifully. And the many moral questions the movie raises are well worth exploring. I recommend the film wholeheartedly -- despite these, yes, minor flaws -- because it is so full of intelligence, humanity and spirit. Word-of-mouth, I believe, is going to be major on this film, so don't be surprised if you can't get in to see it on your initial attempt or two.

A Separation (from Sony Pictures Classics, 123 minutes) opens this Friday, December 30, in New York (at Film Forum and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema) and in West Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal. A nationwiderollout begins the following week and will continue over the coming weeks and months. Click here to see the playdates, cities and theaters so far scheduled.

On-Demand: Safy Nebbou's ANGEL OF MINE with Frot and Bonnaire

Two expert perfor-
mances from French actresses Catherine Frot and Sandrine Bonnaire anchor ANGEL OF MINE (L'empreinte de l'ange), a film based on real events co-written (with Cyril Gomez-Mathieu) and directed by Safy Nebbou.  Although the title card telling us that this story is "real" does not ap-
pear until film's end, you may, as did TrustMovies, come to the same conclu-
sion earlier on.  This tale is simply too bizarre to be fiction.

Fortunately M. Nebbou (shown at right) has the good sense to let his story tell itself, slow-
ly and quietly building ques-
tions, along with suspense.  The filmmaker provides neither the bells nor the whistles -- overwrought music, copious tears, melodramatic moments -- usually supplied in a tale that, however close to reality it might be, still approaches what we moviegoers of many years used to call a "woman's weepie."  No: Safy elects to turn his movie into more of a mystery -- what's happening, and why? -- and then leave it in the hands of his actors who are good enough to carry it off.

All I'll say about the plot is that it concerns two families, the little girl that brings them together, stalking, possible insanity and a past fraught with a major event. The adult characters we see have clearly gone through a lot (though we viewers don't learn for awhile just what this has entailed), hence their gravity and suspicions.  The younger set, on the other hand, have been protected well by their parents and so are free to laugh, play and enjoy life to the hilt, which they do.  (Safy has drawn lovely performances from all three children: Héloïse Cunin, a newcomer who has the pivotal role, Arthur Vaughan-Whitehead and Zacharie Chasseriaud.)

Ms Bonnaire (from Vagabond through the upcoming Queen to Play), shown above and elsewhere on this post, is capable of just about anything, and that's what she gives us here, fielding it all like a pro. Ms Frot, below and elsewhere (fabulous in Chaos, The Page Turner and Les soeurs fâchées to name but three of her many films) remains clench-jawed and just this side of frightening throughout.  Her eyes are remarkably agile, however, and so we feel her pain.  When she finally relaxes, this arrives like a blessing on the audience.

In the fine supporting case are Wladimir Yordanoff (below, left, with Ms Bonnaire), Antoine Chappey and the wonderful Michel Aumont, filling their roles to its brim -- given the small amount of screen time each is offered.

Angel of Mine is available now On-Demand from IFC Films via most major TV reception providers. You can click here to learn if yours has the film -- and if so, how to get it.