Like Father, Like Son - Quick Movie Review

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Title: Like Father, Like Son

Release Date: 2014-01-17

Genres: Drama


High essence:

"go-getting workaholic architect Ryota Nonomya (Masaharu Fukuyama), one of comfort and quietly ordered affluence with his wife Midori (Machiko Ono) and son Keita (Keita Ninomya), is violently overturned when hospital administrators reveal the unthinkable: Keita is not his biological son."

"Ryota and Midori Nonomiya (played by Masaharu Fukuyama and Machiko Ono) live in an expensive, modern Tokyo high-rise with their only child, Keita."

"As in his prior masterpiece, 2008's Still Walking, Koreeda has a poet's eye for human nuance."

"Yudaiand Yukari Saiki (Rirî Furankî and Yôko Maki, The Grudge)are, like Midori's mother, not urban sophisticates."

"So it is that young Keita, wide-eyed at six, becomes little more than currency to be exchanged with his biological parents, whose own possession of the Nonomiya's birth son Ryusei drags the lot of them into tentative familial warfare and, worse, looming litigation."

"A failed bid to buy the Saikis out of their parental obligations to either child initially exposes Ryota's vulnerability in this most delicate of scenarios, but his true character and the root of his snobbish, impersonal manner are more subtly alluded to in the everyday moments between a father and his son that Koreeda is such a master at capturing."

"The director also captures the humble essence of Japanese culture, as the mothers are taken to task for failing to recognise that the children were not their own, before an unexpected twist blindsides audiences and introduces another fascinating plot strand."

Like Father, Like Son 2014 DVD

 

Medium essence:

Louise Keller:
  • go-getting workaholic architect Ryota Nonomya (Masaharu Fukuyama), one of comfort and quietly ordered affluence with his wife Midori (Machiko Ono) and son Keita (Keita Ninomya), is violently overturned when hospital administrators reveal the unthinkable: Keita is not his biological son.
  • Due to a mistake made by a nurse (Megumi Morisaki), his 'true' son has been raised in the dishevelled but warm-hearted home of working-class shopkeeper Yudai Saiki (Riri Furanki) and his wife Yukari (Yoko Maki).
  • But Hirokazu Kore-eda's focus here is on the theme of fatherhood, coupled with the theme of parenthood as a biological or nurturing drive.

Peter Rainer:
  • 'Like Father, Like Son' follows two families whose sons were switched at birth.
  • In Kore-Eda's view, the Nonomiyas wealth makes them, or at least Ryota, who is a successful workaholic architect, less warm and fuzzy than the Saikis, who take splashy family baths together and go kite flying.
  • Ryota and Midori Nonomiya (played by Masaharu Fukuyama and Machiko Ono) live in an expensive, modern Tokyo high-rise with their only child, Keita.

Nathan Southern:
  • Masaharu Fukuyama and Machiko Ono star, respectively, as Ryomo and Midori Nonomiya, a married couple raising their only child, six-year-old son Keita (Keita Ninomiya), in an upscale apartment.
  • As in his prior masterpiece, 2008's Still Walking, Koreeda has a poet's eye for human nuance.
  • Cast & Details See all » Released: 2ing: Review: Hirokazu Koreeda's Like Father, Like Son observes several months in the lives of two radically different Japanese families, initially unacquainted with one another, but who are mutually thrust into a bizarre, devastating situation that courts only sticky s...

Laura Clifford:
  • Yudaiand Yukari Saiki (Rirî Furankî and Yôko Maki, The Grudge)are, like Midori's mother, not urban sophisticates.
  • The experiences of the boys, who have been'swapped' on Saturdays by the two families (Ryusei is the eldest of four,adding another level of complexity), tell yet another story.
  • Laura: Writer/director Kore-eda Hirokazu (Nobody Knows, I Wish) has examinedthe dynamics of families split apart since 1995's Maborosi, but this time,as the father of a 5 year-old himself, the project's more personal.

Calum Marsh:
  • So it is that young Keita, wide-eyed at six, becomes little more than currency to be exchanged with his biological parents, whose own possession of the Nonomiya's birth son Ryusei drags the lot of them into tentative familial warfare and, worse, looming litigation.
  • Not unlike Asghar Farhadi's A Separation , Like Father, Like Son delineates its warring families along class lines, aligning us from the beginning with a husband and wife in the comfortable middle-class before pitting them, and in a sense us, against a pair from a lower stratum.
  • com Recent speculation regarding Steven Spielberg's intentions to remake Like Father, Like Son seems somewhat counterintuitive.

Adam Woodward:
  • A failed bid to buy the Saikis out of their parental obligations to either child initially exposes Ryota's vulnerability in this most delicate of scenarios, but his true character and the root of his snobbish, impersonal manner are more subtly alluded to in the everyday moments between a father and his son that Koreeda is such a master at capturing.
  • Hirokazu Koreeda is the natural heir to Yasujir Ozu, so any new film from this great Japanese auteur is well worth getting exciting about.
  • An architect by trade, every aspect of his life is a shrine to order and excellence, extending to the elegant Tokyo apartment he shares with wife Midori (Machika Ono) and their well-mannered, neatly groomed son, Keita.

Shaun Munro:
  • It is Keita's father who struggles with the scenario most, torn between the six years he has spent with Keita and the inevitable biological ties that bind him to Ryusei.
  • The director also captures the humble essence of Japanese culture, as the mothers are taken to task for failing to recognise that the children were not their own, before an unexpected twist blindsides audiences and introduces another fascinating plot strand.
  • As for the Palme, with a jury president whose work is so attuned to notions of the family, consider its chances very strong indeed.

Low essence:

Louise Keller:
  • go-getting workaholic architect Ryota Nonomya (Masaharu Fukuyama), one of comfort and quietly ordered affluence with his wife Midori (Machiko Ono) and son Keita (Keita Ninomya), is violently overturned when hospital administrators reveal the unthinkable: Keita is not his biological son.
  • Due to a mistake made by a nurse (Megumi Morisaki), his 'true' son has been raised in the dishevelled but warm-hearted home of working-class shopkeeper Yudai Saiki (Riri Furanki) and his wife Yukari (Yoko Maki).
  • When the two boys stay with their respective biological parents as a first step, Ryusei compares Ryota and Midori's formal apartment to that of a hotel.
  • While Ryusei's enquiring nature may be more in line with Ryota's own personality, he is irritated by the distraction of the lack of discipline The film's emotional heart focuses on Ryota and the journey he faces as he is forced to confront the real issues in his life.
  • But Hirokazu Kore-eda's focus here is on the theme of fatherhood, coupled with the theme of parenthood as a biological or nurturing drive.
  • It's not until the Nonomayas learn their baby was switched at birth with another that we meet that other family, the Saikis, a happily dishevelled shopkeeper (a devoted father) and his take away food shop waitress wife.
  • They have three kids, the 6 year old Ryusei (Shogen Hwang) the eldest.

Peter Rainer:
  • 'Like Father, Like Son' follows two families whose sons were switched at birth.
  • Baldly put, it's a movie about nature versus nurture.
  • In Kore-Eda's view, the Nonomiyas wealth makes them, or at least Ryota, who is a successful workaholic architect, less warm and fuzzy than the Saikis, who take splashy family baths together and go kite flying.
  • (It might have been more interesting if the wealthy family had been the warmer one the parenting and custody issues would have been more complex if the wealthier couple was also the more loving one.
  • ) Previously Kore-Eda has made movies about rived families that have centered on children, such as Nobody Knows, in which a mother abandons her kids, and I Wish, about parental divorce.
  • Ryota and Midori Nonomiya (played by Masaharu Fukuyama and Machiko Ono) live in an expensive, modern Tokyo high-rise with their only child, Keita.
  • At first there are get-togethers in malls and in each other's homes; then the boys, innocent of the mix-up, are swapped on weekends in preparation for the switch.

Nathan Southern:
  • Masaharu Fukuyama and Machiko Ono star, respectively, as Ryomo and Midori Nonomiya, a married couple raising their only child, six-year-old son Keita (Keita Ninomiya), in an upscale apartment.
  • As in his prior masterpiece, 2008's Still Walking, Koreeda has a poet's eye for human nuance.
  • Cast & Details See all » Released: 2ing: Review: Hirokazu Koreeda's Like Father, Like Son observes several months in the lives of two radically different Japanese families, initially unacquainted with one another, but who are mutually thrust into a bizarre, devastating situation that courts only sticky s...
  • Then shattering news threatens to tear the household to pieces: The country hospital where Midori delivered Keita phones the couple and informs them that its employees may have erred six years prior by accidentally confusing the birth parentage of Keita with that of another infant.
  • DNA tests confirm the parents' gravest fears: The child they've come to know and love isn't their biological offspring, but the son of Yukari and Yudai Saiki (Yoko Maki and Riri Furanki, respectively), a working-class couple in a nearby town; they gave birth in the same hospital at the same time and have blindly spent years raising the Nonomiyas' little boy, named Ryusei (Shogen Hwang), along with their other children.
  • The families meet and consider taking action against the hospital, but such recourse is tangential to the most critical question: how to adjust their interfamilial behavior.
  • Or should they attempt to swap children and begin again from ground zero?

Laura Clifford:
  • At a family interview at the 'cram' school the Nonomiyas have enrolledtheir six year-old, Keita (Keita Ninomiya), in, Ryota (singer/songwriterMasaharu Fukuyama) says the boy most resembles his mother, Midori (MachikoOno).
  • When he and Midori learn that they have been raising anothercouple's child and that that couple have been raising theirs, he lashes outat both his son ('That explains things...
  • Yudaiand Yukari Saiki (Rirî Furankî and Yôko Maki, The Grudge)are, like Midori's mother, not urban sophisticates.
  • They live aboveYudai's run down appliance store where he seems to do little in the way ofactual work.
  • The experiences of the boys, who have been'swapped' on Saturdays by the two families (Ryusei is the eldest of four,adding another level of complexity), tell yet another story.
  • But while Kore-eda may have focused on fathers, he gives ample time to themothers as well and it is their behavior - both Midori and Yukari - who giveRyota an epiphany of sorts.
  • Laura: Writer/director Kore-eda Hirokazu (Nobody Knows, I Wish) has examinedthe dynamics of families split apart since 1995's Maborosi, but this time,as the father of a 5 year-old himself, the project's more personal.

Calum Marsh:
  • So it is that young Keita, wide-eyed at six, becomes little more than currency to be exchanged with his biological parents, whose own possession of the Nonomiya's birth son Ryusei drags the lot of them into tentative familial warfare and, worse, looming litigation.
  • Not unlike Asghar Farhadi's A Separation , Like Father, Like Son delineates its warring families along class lines, aligning us from the beginning with a husband and wife in the comfortable middle-class before pitting them, and in a sense us, against a pair from a lower stratum.
  • com Recent speculation regarding Steven Spielberg's intentions to remake Like Father, Like Son seems somewhat counterintuitive.
  • Ryota is a man of means made cold by his deference to poise and composure; Yudai, on the other hand, is a man scraping by made loving and carefree by a life of relative leisure.
  • Certainly, Kore-eda's invocation of the traditional Absent Father plants him firmly in Spielbergian territory, but his gentle directorial touch is difficult to imagine translated into American blockbuster storytelling.
  • What's left without it is something merely schematic.
  • Each of Kore-eda's nine fiction features to date proceeds, with varying degrees of nuance, from a fairly sensational premise, and on paper they have a tendency to sound more like broad daytime soap operas than the typically subtle, even minimalistic dramas they are.

Adam Woodward:
  • When things threaten to take a turn for the melodramatic after Keita's biological parents the comparatively down-at-heel but wholesome and loving Saikis arrive on the scene, Koreeda shrewdly maintains a composed, understated tone, dividing his film into four seasons across which each adult will learn more about themselves than their respective counterparts.
  • A failed bid to buy the Saikis out of their parental obligations to either child initially exposes Ryota's vulnerability in this most delicate of scenarios, but his true character and the root of his snobbish, impersonal manner are more subtly alluded to in the everyday moments between a father and his son that Koreeda is such a master at capturing.
  • Hirokazu Koreeda is the natural heir to Yasujir Ozu, so any new film from this great Japanese auteur is well worth getting exciting about.
  • The kids are seriously adorable too.
  • Would you exchange kids if the opportunity presented itself?
  • This is the impenetrably dense moral quandary at the heart of director Hirokazu Koreeda's sublime domestic drama, Like Father, Like Son , a film that in gently plumbing the emotional depths of parenthood is the perfect antidote to Hollywood's gratingly facetious brand of baby swap comedy.
  • An architect by trade, every aspect of his life is a shrine to order and excellence, extending to the elegant Tokyo apartment he shares with wife Midori (Machika Ono) and their well-mannered, neatly groomed son, Keita.

Shaun Munro:
  • Social circumstances, of course, are unavoidable; Keita was born - or rather, swapped - into a life where he wanted for nothing, whereas Ryusei was raised in a more humble, down-to-Earth blue collar environment, in which piano lessons and expensive, fresh meat dinners were not even a consideration.
  • It is Keita's father who struggles with the scenario most, torn between the six years he has spent with Keita and the inevitable biological ties that bind him to Ryusei.
  • As he has to be reminded at one point, it is who raises you that appears to matter most to most people.
  • The director also captures the humble essence of Japanese culture, as the mothers are taken to task for failing to recognise that the children were not their own, before an unexpected twist blindsides audiences and introduces another fascinating plot strand.
  • As for the Palme, with a jury president whose work is so attuned to notions of the family, consider its chances very strong indeed.
  • However, early on they are summoned to the hospital in which he was born and informed that, in fact, Keita is not their son; he was somehow switched with another at birth.
  • nurture debate.

Source:
http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=20363&s=Reviews
http://www.film.com/movies/like-father-like-son-review
http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2014/0117/Like-Father-Like-Son-cuts-to-the-heart-of-what-it-means-to-be-a-parent
http://www.reelingreviews.com/likefatherlikeson.htm
http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/reviews/cannes-2013-review-like-father-like-son-is-a-heartfelt-family-drama-and-strong-palme-dor-contender.php
http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/theatrical-reviews/like-father-like-son-25090
http://movies.tvguide.com/like-father-like-son/review/630660