Still Walking

A family reunion in the grandparents' house over lunch.

"A supremely subtle portrayal of the tensions within a Japanese familty from the master of domestic drama...even in subtitled form, this is a dialogue master class. Sly comments and pointed asides take precedence over speechifying, while revelations are subtly layered in without narrative stategies becoming unduly obvious" (Sight and Sound) "Delicately observed in the subdued fashion of Ozu" (Philip French).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id7tXouypEE

Yoshio Harada plays a retired doctor, an imperious, querulous old man, who lives by the seaside with his elderly wife. His two grown up, married children come for a visit. There is a daughter, who is close to the mother, and shares with her an exasperation with the cantankerous father and his ways; she's continually urging her parents to come and live with her and her hearty, amiable husband. The son is Ryo (Hiroshi Abe) who has just married a widow, Yukari (Yui Natsukawa), and become a stepfather to her young boy – the father disapproves of the marriage as being somehow second best.

There is a spectre at this feast. The oldest son, Junpei, was killed as a boy saving the life of a schoolfriend from drowning, and this boy has grown up to be a tiresome chump and a loser. From an obscure spirit of masochism, of strained politeness and also a strange need to punish this man for living while their beloved son has died, they insist on inviting him to tea, excruciatingly, every year, in the presence of their ­children – and he cannot refuse. Ryo is angry at being made to feel second best, silently seething at all the fond anecdotes about how great Junpei was, and conceals from his father the fact of his own humiliation – that he is actually out of work at the ­moment. The old man is angry and ­depressed, and it is Ryo's little stepson to whom the old man reaches out.

Unlike family dramas as conceived of in British or American films, there are no crockery-smashing rows. ­More realsitically, resentments and anger are contained within the conventions of politeness and respect.