After the Storm

Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda (Still Walking) is known for making perceptive and compassionate films about strains within families. After the Storm is one of his most understated dramas, a lovely, low-key film about divorce and disappointment that, as the title suggests, looks at how people pick things up in the aftermath. Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) is an award-winning novelist who missed out on literary success and now works as a private eye who makes money on the side by extorting his victims. Ryota is also an inveterate gambler who is months behind on child support for his shy son, who still idolizes him. Ryota apparently takes after his own father, who his widowed mother (Kirin Kiki) seems glad to be shut of. All of these issues come to a head when Ryota's ex-wife and son are stuck with him in his mom's apartment during a typhoon. Rather than dramatic fireworks, however, there is a gentle coming to terms and self-realization that suggests hope for better days. There is plenty of witty humor running throughout the film's portrait of troubled characters and frustrated dreams but at heart Kore-eda is a humanist whose innate compassion looks for the best even as he reveals the worst in the scheming divorcee dad. Fans of foreign cinema featuring subtle stories with nuanced and contradictory characters will appreciate. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)