Kikujiro

Summer holiday begins and Masao has nowhere to go. He lives with his grandmother and has never met his mother. Working from a photograph he decides to look for her. The man who sets out with him is Kikujiro, coarse, idle and out for himself, who only goes because his wife makes him. The journey changes something less in the boy than in him. When they find the mother, nobody gets what they wanted. Takeshi Kitano wrote, directed and played Kikujiro, with Yusuke Sekiguchi as Masao. The score is by Joe Hisaishi. The name comes from the director's own life. The Japanese title means Kikujiro's Summer, and Kitano built the character on his father Kikujiro Kitano, a gambler who struggled to feed his family and pay the rent. It competed at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999. The reviews were mixed. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 61 percent and Metacritic at 44. A documentary about the production, Jam Session, screened at festivals including Rotterdam. Who it is for: viewers curious about the side of Kitano outside his violent films, and anyone who likes road movies. Who it is not for: anyone after emotional closure. The film does not fill the gap, and for some viewers its humour lands as forced.