Tokyo Sonata

Although Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is famous for his eerie and unsettling horror films, his work is actually more about disconnection and alienation than scares and spectacle. This dramedy about the dysfunctional Sasaki family tackles the same concerns in the form of a social satire. The father, Ryûhei (Teruyuki Kagawa), downsized out of a corporate job, keeps his dismissal secret while working as a janitor; directionless adult son Takashi (Yû Koyanagi) contemplates a career in the American military (which is now accepting foreign recruits to meet enlistment shortages); a younger son, Kenji (Inowaki Kai), secretly pursues his musical passion; and the lonely and miserable mother, Megumi (Kyôko Koizumi), quietly slips into rebellion with a would-be outlaw (Kôji Yakusho). A Cannes festival prizewinner, Tokyo Sonata effectively captures both the stresses of financial uncertainty and the dissolution of paternal authority in a wryly deadpan film that is still tenderly affectionate and even optimistic. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)