The film begins with a couple and their child on a train. They are visiting the man's father in a small town. Slowly, it transpires that this is not a conventional family set-up: Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) is Mutsu's (Ryuga Hyashi) stepfather, the result of the man marrying the widowed Yukari (Yui Natsukawa). It's a marriage the old folk disapprove of, as shown in the cordial yet cool reception from the patriarch, Kyohei (Yoshio Harada), and his wife Toshiko (Kirin Kiki).

Such sentiments, however, rarely emerge to the forefront. Toshiko might frown and express her views about Ryota's marriage when Yukari's out of earshot, but at the family table it's all genteel talk.

The same goes for Kyohei's disdain for Ryota, whom he sees as a slack do-no-gooder who can never compare to elder son Junpei, who became a doctor and briefly took over the family-run clinic before dying young.

Kore-eda does not revert to flashbacks for this. He allows Junpei's presence to hover over the home like a spectre, an unspoken regret which only sporadically comes up in conversation or through the empty clinic the old folks still attend to with care.

Abe's performance as Ryota is stellar: he provides a nuanced turn which evokes his character's frustration and fury as he fails to become either a prodigal son or role-model husband and father due to his inability to hold down a job.

That Kyohei hops a generation and begins to convince Mutsu to become a doctor when he grows up adds to Ryota's exasperation, which explodes then fizzles away again, with Kore-eda never to resorting to a major bust-up. Extras: making-of featurette.