Love this movie. So unexpected. Just watch it because it is as good as anything Somai had made. The premise of this old trickster father impeding on the yuppie son's life is the opposite as The Friends, about a society that comes to an old hermit.
Both films are offering cartoonish caricatures of old funny men, but gradually peel back the layer of the deep, rich humanity living within them.
My favorite is the quiet wife's reactions throughout it (played by Yuki Saito who starred in Somai's Lost Chapter, very cool to see them collab again)
The elder males are missing on both sides. It is a family of women. The husband is in a constant depression and self pity from the economic collapse. Society does not offer his masculinity to be actualized. Then, perhaps he is too attached from his victimhood to embrace the old man.
The wife, the film keeps making the point, she comes from money and does not really care about him being breadwinner. She is just desperate for a masculine, grandfatherly figure for the son, for the household.
One review mentioned Koreeda, and I thought of him too with the domestic family drama. But I feel Koreeda misses in the theater of melodrama, the storytelling. I am seldomly surprised in his work the way I am by these, the way they are always throwing curveballs at the premise.
