Synopsis
Twelve years after their beloved eldest son, Junpei, drowned while saving a stranger's life, Kyohei and Toshiko welcome their surviving children home for a family reunion. Younger son Ryota still feels that his parents resent that he isn't the one who died; his new wife, Yukari, is awkwardly meeting the rest of the family for the first time. Daughter Chinami strains to fill the uncomfortable pauses with forced cheer.
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Cast
- Hiroshi AbeRyota Yokoyama
- Kirin KikiToshiko Yokoyama
- Yui NatsukawaYukari Yokoyama
- Yoshio HaradaKyohei Yokoyama
- YOUChinami Yokoyama
- Kazuya TakahashiNobuo Kataoka
- Hotaru NomotoSatsuki Kataoka
- Ryôga HayashiMutsu Kataoka
- Shohei TanakaAtsushi Yokoyama
- Susumu TerajimaSushi Deliverer
Recommendations
- 100
Time Out
We are in the presence of a new classic. - 100
The A.V. Club
The movie seems like a perfect found object, as if it had always existed and was just waiting to be uncovered. - 100
Chicago Sun-Times
Painful family issues are more likely to stay beneath the surface, known to everyone but not spoken of. Still Walking, a magnificent new film from Japan, is very wise about that, and very true. - 90
Variety
Its modest surface belies the depths of a lovely seriocomedy that concisely lays bare all kinds of uncomfortable dynamics in seemingly casual, low-key fashion. - 90
Village Voice
Koreeda imbues the story with such specificity, tactility, and humanity that yet another movie about a dysfunctional family reunion becomes a cinematic tone poem. - 90
NPR
Quite aside from Shinto transformation parables or Buddhist reincarnation teachings, the final scene shows how family wisdom is conserved and recycled. It's a moment that might elicit a smile or a tear, or perhaps both. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
Kore-eda listens to his characters' inner thoughts with the attentiveness of a piano tuner, and reveals them with the lightest inferences. - 80
The New York Times
This is life as it’s lived, not dreamed. And this is a family bound not only by sorrow, but also by a shared history that emerges in 114 calibrated minutes and ends with a wallop.
