Still Walking
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Year Released: 2008
Rating: 2.0
Mediocre family drama about a pleasant Summertime gathering spoiled, to a degree, by the elephant in the room: the memory of the death of the one son years ago. As much as I love Kore-eda's pensiveness and touches of humor, there's something mechanical about this picture that hampers the overall emotional effect: the individual discussions are straight from real-life (the bitter side-comments, the lingering malice toward a neighbor boy), but the 'dead son' comes up entirely too often (sometimes in symbolic form, like the yellow butterfly) as if to keep the picture 'on-track.' Loses considerable momentum once the one daughter and her children leave the house: that's when everyone else starts wandering around and brooding.
