MOTHER

Akiko is a mother of two. She does not work, asks her family for money and swears at them when refused. Her relationships with men are short and all end badly. From a young age her son Shuhei looks after her: he hides the money, cares for his sister and keeps track of her debts. Years pass. The family cannot settle anywhere; they move from house to house and hotel to hotel and Shuhei cannot go to school. Then Akiko asks something of her son. Tatsushi Ōmori directs. Masami Nagasawa plays Akiko and Daiken Okudaira plays Shuhei. The film starts from a real case; an incident in Japan in which a mother directed her son into a crime had been widely discussed. The narrative does not show the mother as entirely bad and defends her nowhere either; the film does not try to make her intelligible. Masami Nagasawa was known mostly for sympathetic parts and this was judged a break in her career. Social services are inside the narrative and the film shows why the institutions could not intervene. Its hardest side is the boy's attachment; when a chance to leave his mother appears, Shuhei does not take it. The ending is unexplained and the narrative gives no consolation. Who it is for: people who watch hard Japanese drama and narratives based on real events. Who it is not for: the subject is extremely heavy, the register bleak, and it is hard to watch.