The Long Excuse

Sachio is a well-known writer. His wife dies in a bus crash, and at the time Sachio was at home with another woman. He is supposed to weep at the funeral and cannot. He meets a lorry driver who lost his wife in the same crash; the man has two small children and, because of his work, nobody to look after them. Sachio offers to do it. Miwa Nishikawa adapted the film from her own novel. The subject of the telling is not grief but grief failing to arrive: the man blames himself for not being sad and looks for something to make up for it. Looking after the children is that something. The film never fully settles how much of it is genuine and how much is performance. Masahiro Motoki plays Sachio. The scenes built with the child actors are the best part of the film and are not made sweet at any point.