Kazoku:Eiga Sai 2014, Day 5

On Eiga Sai's fourth day, the film that we saw had a much bigger ambition:the family was placed within the context of a nation's history. Let's check out if the film shown on my fifth day at the fest has a similar vein.

• "Like Father, Like Son" by Hirokazu Kore-eda (121 mins) 

When the film made its premiere in Cannes last year, not a few critics were not that eager about it as they found the film to be mawkish and minor, an uncharacteristically inferior work from the usually superb filmmaker. Despite that, the jury led by Steven Spielberg (whose films were not that far from the theme of this particular Kore-eda work) was impressed and awarded "Like Father, Like Son" the festival's Jury Prize. Having finally seen it in this year's Eiga Sai, I begin to wonder what those critics were actually thinking. If they found "Like Father, Like Son" as a sob, then how else would "The Fault in Our Stars" measure up with them? In my opinion, Kore-eda's film is the kind of drama that teleserye lovers would be hard put to appreciate:it's so gentle and restrained it's almost like a lullaby. Its subject of children swapped during birth is a potential tearjerker material. But the director is less concerned with the melodrama inherent in the material than with the notion of what constitutes a family and what does it take to become a parent. Is being related by blood all that matters when it comes to maintaining a happy and loving family? Does being a father or a mother simply mean being able to materially provide for your children ? Do we have to measure up the upbringing of our children against how our parents did so to us? The answers, of course, are not that simple. Compared to "After Life", "Still Walking" and "Nobody Knows", "Like Father, Like Son" has a less somber tone. Despite the gravity of the subject at hand (child-swapping, whether intentional or not, has serious legal consequences, aside from the moral damages it inficts upon the families concerned), the film progresses at a relaxed, at times even playful, pace, especially when it involves the children themselves who, as a testament to Kore-eda's gift in handling child actors (as in "Nobody Knows"), just behave naturally, like the way kids are, instead of making them act awkwardly like adults (as usually happens in Pinoy melodramas). There are scenes in the film that could have been in fact a hot balloon of high dramatic tension (like when the rich father outrightly suggests to the other family that they will take care of the two kids or when he goes to the house of the nurse responsible for the baby switch), but the interplay of delicate emotions is handled with finesse and restraint that those of us who are used to shouting and slapping bouts will be surely disappointed. 

In regards the two families who are suddenly thrown into disarray because of a cruel twist of fate, it is clearly shown how each one "differs" in raising their own blood - the one (the businessman's family), with a clear set of rules and goals, almost followed by the numbers;while the other (the shopkeeper's family), in a more pants-down and dynamic manner, to the point of having to take a bath together. Even so, we cannot tell for sure from the final frame if the two families have already settled for good with their own children or have just accepted what fate has bestowed upon them. Given the film's low-key rhythm, it's still a work that touches our hearts, puts a smile on our faces and makes us wonder at some human follies that we could commit without second thoughts. While "Like Father, Like Son" doesn't reach the same level of emotional brutality as "Nobody Knows" or of philosophical ambition as "After Life", it nevertheless makes us care for the characters and gives us something to ponder about the nature of ties that truly bind a family. 

(Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Like Father, Like Son":The ties that bind a family.)