DVD Review - Like Father, Like Son (2013, Soshite chichi ni naru)

Genre:
Drama, World Cinema
Distributor:
Arrow Films
Rating: PG
BD/DVD Release Date:
5th May 2014 (UK)
Director:
Hirokazu Koreeda
Cast:
Masaharu Fukuyama, Machiko Ono, Yôko Maki
Buy:Like Father, Like Son [DVD] or [Blu-ray]
Like Father, Like Son surrounds the implausible sounding but apparently based on real events story of a well-to-do middle class family finding out that the child they had raised for 6 years was not theirs but had been switched at birth with a child from a working class family. In the hands of a Hollywood studio this premise might have been packaged as an overly-sentimental, melodramatic drama or, worse than that, played out as a facetious 'baby swap' comedy. But in the capable hands of Hirokazu Koreeda it is a gentle, contemplative rumination on parenthood and identity.

The film's focus is squarely on the middle class family with the main emphasis being on patriarch Ryota Nonomiya (Masahura Fukuyama), who, although clearly a loving father, is strict and often neglectful in his abscence so dedicated is he to his round-the-clock architect's job. He is a man who likes to be in control and is highly demanding in his strive for perfection, a demand with which he burdens his son Keita, unable to hide his disappointment when the child does not live up to his high standards. The news that Keita is not his biological son serves as a revelation, "now it all makes sense," he mutters. It is because his son shares no heredity link to him, so he believes, that his son is an underachiever.

The nature-versus-nurture debate is central to the film, with the very traditional Ryota blaming genetics on his lack of connection with Keita, making it an easy decision for him to swap the child with his biological son. His wife Midori (Machika Ono), on the other hand, believes that what matters is who raises the child, she is understandably reluctant to let go of the son she has mothered for 6 years. The emotional depth of Like Father, Like Son in examing this most intimate of family conflicts is quite remarkable. But that is to be expected from a director considered the natural heir to the great Yasujirō Ozu who has a string of films in his oeuvre (Nobody Knows, Still Walking, and I Wish) that encompass the same themes found here: nature-versus-nurture, family bonds, child abandonment, and social class.

The film does have its flaws though, namely the under-representation of the working class Saikis who feel more like an aside in the Nonomiya's story than a integral part in the proceedings. It could be argued that this is deliberate, the family being a projection of what the affluent side of society feel toward their less well off neighbours but if this is the case it doesn't always come across that way, the families pursuit of compensation coming across as greed rather than necessity. Further to this, if the purpose of concentrating on Ryota was to critique tradition and patriarchy within Japanese society, his realisation that he should not have given up the child he fathered for 6 years feels like a cop-out, the overly-sentimental ending undermining much of what came before it.

★★★½☆

Shane James