Film review: Our Little Sister - Hirokazu Koreeda tugs the heartstrings
Japanese director avoids histrionics in tale of parental desertion
For those who have followed Hirokazu Koreeda’s feature film career since its early days and witnessed the Japanese writer-director’s steady ascent to the pantheon of contemporary world cinema, the evolution of his attitude towards family dynamics would seem remarkable indeed.
From mourners seeking answers to their spouses’ suicides (Maborosi, Distance) to child abandonment (Nobody Knows) and the bitter regrets entrenched in a family traumatised by a fatal accident (Still Walking), Koreeda’s naturalistic and deceptively unsentimental dramas rarely shy away from the propensity for cruelty inherent in human nature.
But while his recent efforts, I Wish (2011) and child-swap drama Like Father, Like Son (2013), were both heart-warming stories about young children seeking affection from their largely absent parents, Koreeda – with the arguable exception of his 1998 fantasy After Life – may have made his gentlest film to date with Our Little Sister.
