Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Ryota is an unpopular writer although he won a literary award 15 years ago. Now, Ryota works as a private detective. He is divorced from his ex-wife Kyoko and he has an 11-year-old son Shingo. His mother Yoshiko lives alone at her apartment. One day, Ryota, his ex-wife Kyoko, and son Shingo gather at Yoshiko's apartment. A typhoon passes and the family must stay there all night long.
Hirokazu Kore-eda's quiet domestic drama is anchored by a superb ensemble, particularly Hiroshi Abe as the hapless Ryota and Kirin Kiki as his sharp-witted mother. The acting is the film's clear standout — naturalistic, warm, and precise. The plot is a gentle, low-stakes slice-of-life that suits Kore-eda's style but doesn't surprise, following familiar beats of regret and strained family bonds. Cinematography is competent and unshowy in Kore-eda's understated manner — functional rather than visually distinctive. Novelty is moderate: it sits comfortably within Kore-eda's established domestic-realist mode rather than breaking new ground even for his own filmography. The ending is characteristically open and bittersweet, emotionally resonant but deliberately inconclusive in a way that feels earned yet unsurprising for the genre.