The Asadas!

Masashi has taken photographs since childhood but does not know what to do with himself. One day he comes to his family with an idea: they will all act out people they are not, and he will take that picture. The family become firefighters, racing drivers, gangsters. The photographs accumulate and become a book. Then the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 arrive. Ryota Nakano directs. Kazunari Ninomiya plays Masashi. The film rests on a real life, that of the photographer Masashi Asada. The book of staged pictures of his family won the Kimura Ihei award in 2009. The section after the disaster is the real subject. Asada joined the volunteer effort to clean family albums and photographs found in the wreckage and return them to their owners. Thousands of pictures spoiled by water and mud were washed, dried and laid out in gymnasiums so that people could find their own. The idea of the film comes together there: what family photographs taken for fun turn out to mean once everything else is gone. The first half is light and comic; the tone hardens in the second and the change is abrupt in places. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese family drama and anyone interested in photography. Who it is not for: it is long, the emotional emphasis is high, and the comedy of the first half does not fully settle against the weight of the second.