What a Wonderful Family!

Shuzo and Tomiko have been married fifty years. He is retired and spends his days on golf and drink; she runs the house and nobody asks her anything. On her birthday Shuzo asks, for the first time, what she wants. Tomiko hands him a piece of paper: divorce papers. The household erupts. Two sons, their wives and a sister gather; every one of them turns it into their own problem, and nobody asks the actual question, which is why she wants this. Yoji Yamada directs the Japanese film; a hundred and eight minutes. The same cast had played together in Yamada's previous film, Tokyo Family. Yamada has been making films for nearly sixty years and his subject has always been the family; here he uses the shape of a comedy, but what is being laughed at is a family that cannot see the woman in it.