Like Father, Like Son is a perfectly crafted drama

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      Directed by Hirokazu Kore-Eda. Starring Masaharu Fukuyama. In Japanese, with English subtitles. Rating not available.

      The insecurities of childhood are featured heavily in the movies of masterful writer-director Hirokazu Kore-Eda. In Nobody Knows and I Wish, kids were either abandoned or separated from siblings. But the children anchoring Like Father, Like Son are perhaps too well attended. When we meet them at age 6, it soon turns out they were switched at birth, creating king-size turmoil for the adults.

      The initial focus is on the well-to-do Nonomiyas, who live in a serene, if sterile, modern high-rise overlooking Tokyo. Handsome Ryota (Masaharu Fukuyama) is a hard-driven architect who doesn’t have a lot of time for placid wife Midori (Machiko Ono) and round-faced Keita (confusingly, the boy’s real-life name is Keita Ninomiya). He treats them with studied affection rather than genuine warmth, and seems generally disappointed by Keita’s lack of ambition in piano lessons and so forth.

      Ryota, who has some daddy issues of his own, is impressed when the kid exaggerates their family bond to get into an elite private school. (“They told us to do that at cram school,” Keita explains.) A routine blood test then reveals that the Nonomiyas are unrelated to their son; the ripple effect also upsets the Saikis, in a much poorer part of town. Ryota’s biological son (Shôgen Hwang) has grown up with two other siblings amid the clutter and chaos of the tiny apartment of a tough-minded woman (Yôko Maki) and her slightly goofy husband, who runs a grungy appliance store; he doesn’t get a lot of work done, but the kids sure love him.

      The dishevelled dad is played by Lily Franky, a well-known children’s-book writer and illustrator. The film’s star, Fukuyama, is a popular musician, and a serious photographer, as reflected in his subtly sympathetic character’s relationship with the family camera. For both text and subtext, this perfectly crafted movie will have special resonance at home, where patriarchal notions about clan, class, and bloodlines still run deep, and are likely related to a militarism that surfaces in the shooting games males here use as common currency. But you won’t find a subject more universal than the grey area between the families we’re given and those we choose.

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