*** A couple of young Japanese parents get the news that their 5 year old son has been exchanged at birth, in the hospital, with the kid of another family. Plot follows the adults as they struggle to make things right.
Is there such a thing as “Asianism” or “Japanism”? The strangeness, the stylisation, the richness of the world’s East front is so attractive. Thank goodness for film! I think I’m at a point where I’ve amassed such a sheer quantity of film-files on hard drives, that even if the world’s transport system falls to ruin I’ll still be able to travel in style to the end of my days.
Simple, direct characterisation of the two families opposes two world views:
- one is rich, living in a modern skyscraper, driven by a success-driven patriarch who never allows his son to sleep with the adults for fear of making him less independent, piano lessons despite the kid’s lack of talent for it;
- one is blue collar, liberal, led by a prankster of a dad who takes all his 3 children with him when he takes a bath.
Story explores the painful transformations that adults go through, usually against their nature, when trying to accommodate the growing and transforming needs of family members.
The heart in conflict with itself. Once the idea of the children’s exchange and the act itself takes place, the adults are tormented by the love invested and lost in the other child.
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