By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Kôji Fukada
Starring: Bryerly Long | Eriko Ono | Haruka Saito | Hiroko Matsuda | Kanji Furutachi | Kumi Hyôdô | Tatsuya Kawamura
Original language title: Kantai
Country: japan
Year: 2012
Running time: 96
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1733147/
Thom says: “This unsentimental winner is yet one more great representative of the Film Movement visionary picks. This might well have come from the family-orientation oeuvre of an Ozu until we realize that this film will veer off into wacky absurdity. A middle-aged working class man lives above his printing shop with his much younger wife, his divorced sister and a daughter from another mother. Later a young boy from yet another wife arrives to stay. A parakeet has been lost from the residence and the family arranges posters around the neighborhood offering a reward. The family is being pestered by the neighborhood watch committee and a man appears claiming to be the son of a past financial friend. He moves into the compound, begins working in the shop and suddenly produces a wife from Brazil (or is it Bulgaria?) who also moves in and starts making designs on the family patriarch who’s obviously getting nothing from his uptight wife. The new man begins moving in one roving visitor after another until the xenophobic neighbors start complaining. This fun, whimsical, quirky film offers oodles of surprises with social commentaries galore. 4.5 cats”