Tokyo Sonata (2008)
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
The winds of change blow as a family grapples with unemployment, alienation, mistrust and a lack of communication. When a Japanese salaryman loses his job to outsourcing to China, it's simply the beginning of a series of shattering incidents, leading to the implosion of the family unit.
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What critics compared Tokyo Sonata to
Actor Yakusho is probably best known to American audiences as a typically mild-mannered light leading man in such films as Shall We Dance? and Babel, although he hit his international stride at the forefront of director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's stock company in Cure, Séance, Doppelganger, and Tokyo Sonata, among others.
It's isn't nearly as powerful as Ordinary People, Boyhood, Tokyo Sonata or The 400 Blows, but at least it's not as schmaltzy as Belfast.
Teruyuki Kagawa – who also starred in Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, 2008 – steals the show with a relishably eccentric performance as the nervy and unnerving Nishino.
And despite his well-deserved reputation for raising goose pimples, Kurosawa has also made well-received straight dramas, including the 2008 “Tokyo Sonata,” a dark film about family disintegration that won the Cannes Un Certain Regard section Jury Prize.
The house in between the Takakuras and the Tanakas appears to be under constant construction and when Yasuko meets its owner, Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa, "Tokyo!," "Tokyo Sonata"), she tells her husband he is "Creepy."
The only exception is Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa, “Penance,” “Tokyo Sonata”) from the secluded house next door.
A character actor who also impressed in Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata (2008) and Penance (2012), Kagawa nails the role of the mysterious neighbour who shows spontaneous bursts of hostility and no conceivable social skills.
Kagawa, who starred in Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata as a white-collar family man with a very different type of secret, is a marvel to watch; when Nishino and Takakura run into each other on a commuter train, he gives a grimacing courtesy smile that falls somewhere in the uncanny valley.