By chronicling a day in the life of a traditional Japanese family, Kore'eda’s Still Walking hints at a greater truth about their existence, and all the bittersweet intricacies it involves. Set over a 24-hour timeframe, in which an extended family reunites to commemorate the drowning of their eldest son 15 years before, this tender new film by the young auteur (After Life, Nobody Knows) examines memory and mortality in an evocative, but hardly melodramatic, manner.

Delicate sentiments run deep in the Yokoyama family: second son Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), a middle-aged painting restorer, resents his aged parents for favouring his long-dead brother. The household’s proud patriarch, a retired doctor, is bitter about Ryota’s decision not to follow him into the medical profession, while also disapproving of his marriage to a widowed single mom. The latter feeling is shared by Ryota’s mother, who, in turn, is also unhappy with her daughter’s plans to move in with her husband and children. And so on.

As such private emotions gradually surface through the extraordinarily naturalistic setting, Kore'eda exquisitely allows his viewers to know more about the characters – from their unshared affection to their subsequently unfulfilled promises – than the characters can ever realise themselves, thereby prompting us to reflect on how much we may have neglected in our own family relations. Neither completely idyllic nor distressing, this sublimely poignant character study will likely rank alongside Ozu’s classics – and be recognised in time as one of the best Japanese family dramas ever put on film.

Edmund Lee

screens on Mar 23 and Apr 1

Read our other features:
Leader of the pack: Daniel Wu
Time regained: Wong Kar Wai
Presidential assassination: Oliver Stone
Van Dammage: JCVD

HKIFF Top ten list:
☆☆☆☆☆☆
Gomorrah (Dir Matteo Garrone)
Web exclusive: Matteo Garrone interview
Still Walking (Dir Hirokazu Kore'eda)
Hunger (Dir Steve McQueen)
Of Time and the City (Dir Terence Davies)
Web exclusive: Terence Davies interview

☆☆☆☆☆☆
Birdsong (Dir Albert Serra)
The Good, the Bad, the Weird (Dir Kim Jee-woon)
Web exclusive: Kim Jee-Woon interview
Revanche (Dir Götz Spielmann)
I've Loved You So Long (Dir Philippe Claudel)
Wendy and Lucy (Dir Kelly Reichardt)
Web exclusive: Kelly Reichardt interview
24 City (Dir Jia Zhangke)