Like Father, Like Son
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 3.0
A workaholic businessman and his wife are informed that the child they've been raising (and disciplining, by Western standards, a bit strongly) is not actually their biological child and that their real child, who has a different personality, is being raised in a lower-income home. Kore-eda's setup is smart and his execution is diligent, as he appears to be privileging nurture over nature: the biological children seem to be better suited for (and comfortable with) the surroundings they were born into. It ends, unfortunately, the way Kore-eda tends to leave things, vague and open-ended - a move he pulled with Nobody Knows - in which the children seem to not appreciate their new surroundings and no one's sure how to handle it: a note of aggravating ambiguity in a difficult situation.
