is a 2013 Japanese
psychological drama
Psychological drama or psychodrama is a sub-genre of drama that places emphasis on psychological elements. It often overlaps with other genres such as crime, fantasy, black comedy, and science fiction, and it is closely related with the psychologi ...
film edited, written, and directed by
Hirokazu Kore-eda
is a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor. He began his career in television and has since directed more than a dozen feature films, including '' Nobody Knows'' (2004), '' Still Walking'' (2008), and '' After the Storm'' ( ...
, starring
Masaharu Fukuyama
is a Japanese singer-songwriter and actor from Nagasaki. He debuted in 1990 with the single "Tsuioku no Ame no Naka".
Fukuyama is represented by the agency Amuse, Inc.
Career
While he can also be seen in Japanese television dramas, Fukuyama ...
in his first role as a father. It premièred on 18 May 2013 at the
2013 Cannes Film Festival
The 66th Cannes Film Festival took place in Cannes, France, from 15 to 26 May 2013. Steven Spielberg was the head of the jury for the main competition. New Zealand film director Jane Campion was the head of the jury for the Cinéfondation and S ...
, where it was nominated for the
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...
.
After the screening, the audience welcomed the film with a ten-minute standing ovation, and director Kore-eda and Fukuyama were moved to tears.
In a 25 May 2013 ceremony, it won the
Jury Prize
A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence and render an impartial verdict (a finding of fact on a question) officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment.
Juries developed in England durin ...
and a commendation from the Ecumenical Jury.
The award sparked a significant response in Japan, and the national theatrical release was brought forward by a week, on 28 September 2013.
The film was also shown at the
2013 Toronto International Film Festival
The 38th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 5 and 15, 2013. '' The Fifth Estate'' was selected as the opening film and '' Life of Crime'' was the closing film. 75 films were ...
,
and won both the Rogers People's Choice Award at the
2013 Vancouver International Film Festival and the Wuaki. TV Audience Award at the 2013
San Sebastián International Film Festival
The San Sebastián International Film Festival ( SSIFF; es, Festival Internacional de San Sebastián, eu, Donostia Zinemaldia) is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of Donostia-San Sebastián in September, in th ...
.
Plot
Ryōta Nonomiya is a successful architect who is focused so much on work that he neglects his wife, Midori, and son, Keita. Upon his return home one day, Midori tells him that the hospital where Keita was born urgently needs to speak to them, and Ryōta senses trouble. After arriving at the hospital, the couple learns that their biological son Ryūsei was switched with Keita at birth, and after DNA tests prove the error, they must now make a life-changing decision to either keep Keita, the boy they raised as their own son, or exchange him for their biological son.
Ryōta and Midori soon meet with the other couple, Yukari and Yūdai Saiki, small town folks who lack the money and drive that Ryōta possess, but who have a better understanding of the importance of child and parent bonds. They share photos, and for the first time, Ryōta and Midori see their biological son, Ryūsei. After several meetings, they decide to exchange children for one Saturday. After several more meetings, they finally decide to exchange children permanently. All four parents have difficulty accepting the loss of their previous sons, and the absence of the parents they used to know causes both boys to shut down emotionally, culminating in Ryūsei running away from the Nonomiya's home and returning to the Saiki's. Ryōta picks up Ryūsei and brings him back home.
Ryōta and Midori begin to bond with Ryūsei, who is also warming up to them. However, while going through the photos on his camera, Ryōta discovers a cache of photos of himself, mostly sleeping, that Keita took, and he breaks down crying. Ryōta now understands the errors of his ways. The three return to the Saiki family, but Keita runs away from Ryōta. While following him, Ryōta apologizes to Keita, and the two make amends. The film ends with the two returning to the Saiki's, and both families entering the home.
Cast
*
Masaharu Fukuyama
is a Japanese singer-songwriter and actor from Nagasaki. He debuted in 1990 with the single "Tsuioku no Ame no Naka".
Fukuyama is represented by the agency Amuse, Inc.
Career
While he can also be seen in Japanese television dramas, Fukuyama ...
as Ryōta Nonomiya
*
Yōko Maki as Yukari Saiki
*
Jun Kunimura
is a Japanese actor who has performed in Japan, Hollywood and Hong Kong. He won Best Supporting Actor and the Popular Star Award at the 37th Blue Dragon Film Awards for his performance in the South Korean horror film '' The Wailing'', directed ...
as Kazushi Kamiyama
*
Machiko Ono
is a Japanese actress.
Career
Born in a rural area of Nara Prefecture, Ono was spotted by the film director Naomi Kawase cleaning out the shoe boxes at her junior high school, and cast in the lead role in Kawase's '' Suzaku'', which earned the f ...
as Midori Nonomiya
*
Kirin Kiki
(15 January 1943 – 15 September 2018) was a Japanese actress for Japanese cinema and television.
Biography
Kiki was born on January 15, 1943, in Kanda, Tokyo. Her father was a master of the ''biwa'' lute and a former police officer. Her mother ...
as Riko Ishizeki
*
Isao Natsuyagi
was a Japanese film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films from 1963 to 2013.
Career
In 1960, Natsuyagi began attending the Bungakuza actors school while attending Keio University. He eventually left Keio before graduating and entered the H ...
as Ryōsuke Nonomiya
*
Lily Franky
is a Japanese illustrator, writer and actor. He has appeared in more than 40 films since 2001.
Career
In 2016, Franky received the Cut Above Award for Outstanding Performance in Film at Japan Cuts
JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film is a ...
as Yūdai Saiki
*
Jun Fubuki
is a Japanese actress.
Career
Jun Fubuki received a Japanese Academy Award Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role in '' Muno no Hito'', and won at the Hochi Film Awards. This role also won Fubuki the "Best Actress" award at the Yokoh ...
as Nobuko Nonomiya
Themes and analysis
As pointed out by Nathan Southern of ''
AllMovie
AllMovie (previously All Movie Guide) is an online database with information about films, television programs, and screen actors. , AllMovie.com and the AllMovie consumer brand are owned by RhythmOne.
History
AllMovie was founded by popular-cult ...
'', the film confronts two distant kinds of Japanese families coming from different social backgrounds and reflects opposing conceptions that coexist in contemporary Japanese society.
These two families, as Mark Kermode notes on ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
,'' are faced with the dilemma of retaining the children they have raised, on the basis of the bonds built with them over six years, or swap them and start over for the sake of blood lineage continuity.
Southern emphasizes Ryōta's transformation in dealing with this difficult choice: he is first convinced to make the swap, believing that the affinities with his biological son will emerge increasingly evident in the future. However, after several encounters with the Saiki family and the confrontations with Yūdai, who advises him not to neglect his family life, and after discovering photographs of him shot by Keita while he was asleep, he acknowledges his emotional bond with him.
Southern recalls two key sequences of the film, commenting that "Kore-eda has a poet's eye for human nuance": in the first scene, where Ryōta reviews Keita's snapshots, he remarks that Ryōta "discover
a part of himself that he never knew existed"; in the second one, where the two families casually pose together for a group photo, he witnesses how "we can see the differences not merely between the clans—one rigid and ascetic, one loose, emotionally free, and unrestricted—but between traditional and more modern Japanese conceptions of family."
David Cirone of ''J-Generation'' brings up the personal theme of balancing social norms with individual freedom, noting that Ryōta is "torn between his own expectations, those of his wife and family, and the mixed suggestions of those around him who all seem to know what's best for him and the children."
Reception
Box office
In the opening weekend, the film topped the national ranking with 253,370 spectators and grossing ¥313.3 million. The film maintained the first position for two consecutive weeks, with 1,168,204 spectators and a box office revenue of ¥1.35 billion ($13.87 million in 2013) in the first 13 days, including pre-release days. It exceeded a revenue of ¥3 billion on 11 November, the 49th day of release, an uncommon achievement for an
art film
An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily f ...
.
The final domestic box office revenue reported in January 2014 was ¥3.2 billion ($30 million).
Critical response
''Like Father, Like Son'' received mostly positive reviews. On the film review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, it holds an approval score, with an average rating of based on reviews. The site's consensus reads, "Sensitively written, smartly directed, and powerfully performed, ''Like Father, Like Son'' uses familiar-seeming elements to tell a thought-provoking story."
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
gives the film a score of 73 out of 100, based on reviews from 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Andrew Chan of the
Film Critics Circle of Australia
The Film Critics Circle of Australia (FCCA) is an association of cinema critics and reviewers. It includes journalists in "media, television, major national and state papers, radio, national and state, online and freelance writers, Australian ...
writes, "Essentially, ''Like Father, Like Son'' is one of those rare films that keep the audience totally engaged, thoroughly profound, fully emoted and ultimately refreshing. In the scale of perfect cinema, this stands quite close." On the website of ''
The American Spectator
''The American Spectator'' is a conservative American magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. It was founded in 1967 by Tyrrell, who remains its editor-i ...
'',
Eve Tushnet
Eve Tushnet (born 1978) is an American lesbian Roman Catholic author, blogger, and speaker. In addition to publishing books, she has a blog and writes regularly for several major magazines, among them '' The American Spectator'', ''Commonweal'', ...
wrote that the film "has some of the striking Kore-eda trademarks: the extraordinary acting from the children; the symmetrical framing and musical pacing; and the shifts between long shots in which all the people look tiny and child's-eye shots where all the people look huge." Andrew Schenker of ''
Slant Magazine
''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York ...
'' wrote a lukewarm review, praising the cinematography but also saying, "The film scores all of its thematic points early
ndunfolds among fairly ordinary lines, hitting all of the expected moments, and simply waiting out the time until Ryota realizes the inevitable folly of his decision."
The film was the choice of Joshua Rothkopf in
IndieWire
IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Hollyw ...
's 2018 list of the best Japanese films of the 21st century.
Remake
DreamWorks Studios DreamWorks may refer to:
* DreamWorks Pictures, an American film production company of Amblin
** DreamWorks Television, an American television production company and division of the film studio
** DreamWorks Records, an American record label and f ...
has acquired remake rights to ''Like Father, Like Son'' after the film caught the eye of
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American director, writer, and producer. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Spie ...
at Cannes.
Chris
Chris is a short form of various names including Christopher, Christian, Christina, Christine, and Christos. Chris is also used as a name in its own right, however it is not as common.
People with the given name
* Chris Abani (born 1966), N ...
and
Paul Weitz are slated to direct.
References
External links
* – archived fro
the originalon 24 May 2013
''Like Father, Like Son''at
IFC Films
IFC Films is an American film production and distribution company based in New York. It is an offshoot of IFC owned by AMC Networks. It distributes mainly independent films under its own name, select foreign films and documentaries under its S ...
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Like Father Like Son
2013 films
2013 drama films
2013 independent films
2010s psychological drama films
Films directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda
Japanese drama films
Japanese independent films
Japanese psychological drama films
2010s Japanese-language films
2010s Japanese films