Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own.
Hirokazu Kore-eda's quietly devastating family drama handles its premise—a hospital baby swap forcing two families to confront nature vs. nurture—with exceptional emotional precision. The performances, especially the restrained portrayal of Ryota's slow emotional awakening, are uniformly excellent. Kore-eda's cinematography is characteristically serene and observational, using domestic spaces to articulate class differences with subtlety. The premise, while not entirely fresh, is elevated by the film's thematic depth. The ending, however, is intentionally understated to the point of ambiguity—emotionally resonant for some but leaving threads unresolved in a way that may feel inconclusive rather than artistically restrained.