Review: After The Storm

The character at the center of Hirokazu Koreeda's After the Storm is one of cinema's biggest failures at life. Ryôta Shinoda (Hiroshi Abe) is a novelist who can't complete his second book. He is also a deadbeat dad who bets the money he earns away on bicycle races instead of paying child support. Even his vanity won't let him admit that his current job as a detective is not for research for his next book. To top all that, he also steals from his elderly mom, Yoshiko (Kirin Kiki). Ryôta lives in the shadow of his dead father, a man who also gambled his life away.

With such a terrible man at the center, it is a wonder that you care for him at all. Perhaps that is the magic and talent of Koreeda, who paints this awful man with all the sympathy and empathy one could imagine. The film never hates him and so it is hard for us to. The film paints him as a man trapped by his own routines and patterns.

Koreeda shoots the film in static shots, allowing the spaces these characters inhabit to be studied. The cramped apartment Yoshiko lives in practically feels like a character of its own by the film's end. The music choices are a big misstep. Koreeda chooses to score the film with saccharine, sentimental music that feels like stock music. It really undermines the craft going on. After the Storm can sound like a Hallmark film on paper and the music only adds to that feeling. It is Koreeda's sure hand in directing the fine performances here that saves the film. He is interested in moments so many others would skip, such as a great scene where Yoshiko and Ryôta share an ice treat.

The second half of the film traps the broken family in the apartment during a typhoon. It feels like a far too neatly orchestrated moment that brings about the film's resolution. Unfortunately most of the big moments in the film have already happened by this time. This is a film where characters make small revelations about life and Ryôta already feels changed by the time the film forces it.

Nevertheless, Hiroshi Abe and Kirin Kiki's performances are why you should see the film. They both feel natural and nuanced. These performances save the film from feeling too sweet and neat. When I think back on the film, I will likely not remember the details of the plot or even the lessons Ryôta learns. I will remember these two characters, wonderfully realized, sharing an ice treat in a small apartment.

3.5/5