PG | 2h 1min | Drama | Japan
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Writer: Hirokazu Koreeda (screenplay)
Stars: Masaharu Fukuyama, Machiko Ono, Yôko Maki
Uplifting
Ryōta Nonomiya is a successful architect who is focused so much on work that he neglects his wife, Midori, and son, Keita. Upon his return home one day, Midori tells him that the hospital where Keita was born urgently needs to speak to them, and Ryōta senses trouble. After arriving at the hospital, the couple learns that their biological son Ryūsei was switched with Keita at birth, and after DNA tests prove the error, they must now make a life-changing decision to either keep Keita, the boy they raised as their own son, or exchange him for their biological son.
Ryōta and Midori soon meet with the other couple, Yukari and Yūdai Saiki, small town folks who lack the money and drive that Ryōta possess, but who have a better understanding of the importance of child and parent bonds. They share photos, and for the first time, Ryōta and Midori see their biological son, Ryūsei. After several meetings, they decide to exchange children for one Saturday. After several more meetings, they finally decide to exchange children permanently. All four parents have difficulty accepting the loss of their previous sons, and the absence of the parents they used to know causes both boys to shut down emotionally, culminating in Ryūsei running away from the Nonomiya's home and returning to the Saiki's. Ryōta picks up Ryūsei and brings him back home.
Ryōta and Midori begin to bond with Ryūsei, who is also warming up to them.
However, while going through the photos on his camera, Ryōta discovers a cache
of photos of himself, mostly sleeping, that Keita took, and he breaks down
crying. Ryōta now understands the errors of his ways. The three return to the
Saiki family, but Keita runs away from Ryōta. While following him, Ryōta
apologizes to Keita, and the two make amends. The film ends with the two
returning to the Saiki's, and both families entering the home.
Critical response
Like
Father, Like Son received mostly positive reviews. On the film review
aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an 87% approval score, with an
average rating of 7.61/10 based on 100 reviews. The site's consensus reads,
"Sensitively written, smartly directed, and powerfully performed, Like
Father, Like Son uses familiar-seeming elements to tell a thought-provoking
story." Metacritic gives the film a score of 73 out of 100, based on
reviews from 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Andrew Chan of the Film Critics Circle of Australia writes, "Essentially,
Like Father, Like Son is one of those rare films that keep the audience totally
engaged, thoroughly profound, fully emoted and ultimately refreshing. In the
scale of perfect cinema, this stands quite close."On the website of The
American Spectator, Eve Tushnet wrote that the film "has some of the
striking Kore-eda trademarks: the extraordinary acting from the children; the symmetrical
framing and musical pacing; and the shifts between long shots in which all the
people look tiny and child's-eye shots where all the people look huge."
Themes and analysis
As
pointed out by Nathan Southern of AllMovie, the film confronts two distant
kinds of Japanese families coming from different social backgrounds and
reflects opposing conceptions that coexist in contemporary Japanese society. These
two families, as Mark Kermode notes on The Observer, are faced with the dilemma
of retaining the children they have raised, on the basis of the bonds built
with them over six years, or swap them and start over for the sake of blood
lineage continuity.
Southern emphasizes Ryōta's transformation in dealing with this difficult choice: he is first convinced to make the swap, believing that the affinities with his biological son will emerge increasingly evident in the future. However, after several encounters with the Saiki family and the confrontations with Yūdai, who advises him not to neglect his family life, and after discovering photographs of him shot by Keita while he was asleep, he acknowledges his emotional bond with him.
Southern recalls two key sequences of the film, commenting that "Kore-eda has a poet's eye for human nuance": in the first scene, where Ryōta reviews Keita's snapshots, he remarks that Ryōta "discover[s] a part of himself that he never knew existed"; in the second one, where the two families casually pose together for a group photo, he witnesses how "we can see the differences not merely between the clans—one rigid and ascetic, one loose, emotionally free, and unrestricted—but between traditional and more modern Japanese conceptions of family."
David Cirone of J-Generation brings up the personal theme of balancing social norms with individual freedom, noting that Ryōta is "torn between his own expectations, those of his wife and family, and the mixed suggestions of those around him who all seem to know what's best for him and the children."