Like Father, Like Son

Synopsis: Ryota and Midori Nonomiya (Masaharu Fukuyama and Machiki Ono) receive a phone call any parent would dread. They are told that their six-year-old son Keita (Keita Ninomiya) is in fact not their biological child. The latter was accidentally switched at birth with Ryusei (Shogen Hwang), and raised by Yudai & Yukari Saiki (Franky Lily and Yoko Maki) as their supposed son. Hospital officials recommend making a swap after acclimatising the boys to their “natural” family.

Much like the recent Israeli film, The Other Son, Like Father, Like Son also examines the difficult issues of what bonds a parent and child. Is it the blood link or the fact of having nurtured this little person from birth?  And just like that film, this one also succeeds in presenting us with an excruciating moral and emotional dilemma that makes for brilliant, satisfying cinema.

Kore-eda is one of my favourite Japanese directors. His earlier films Nobody Knows and I Wish show how well he handles subject matter to do with children and here he proves it yet again. Of course he is helped by two sublime performances from the little boys playing the pair whose lives are turned upside down.

The character of Ryota is critical to the dilemmas at the heart of the story. He is a well-educated, over-achieving corporate man, never spending enough time with Keita. When he hears that Ryusei is his biological son he feels this explains his neglect and that he will now begin to truly bond with his “real” child. By contrast Yudai is a modest shopkeeper in a rough part of town, but he knows what is means to be generous of heart and spirit and his approach to the rough and tumble of his three-child life is in complete contrast to that of Ryota. When Ryota hears that Yudai is hoping for a large settlement from the hospital he even thinks he can “buy” back his son and raise both boys but he underestimates Yudai’s commitment to fatherhood.  Like Yudai, the mothers embrace the presence of both children, finding that it is easy to love each boy and accepting parenthood more as a matter of nurture than blood lineage.

Kore-eda’s thoughtful film captures the universal reality of family life whatever the nationality and the delicate scripting, acting and directing should not fail to move and deeply impress you.

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