‘I have to call my grand parents,” a friend whis pered as she and I left a screening of “Still Walking.”
The tranquil drama by Hirokazu Kore-eda, one of Japan’s most respected filmmakers, is likely to bring similar thoughts to others who watch the depiction of one family’s fragile relationships.
Except for a brief coda, the story takes place during 24 hours at the cramped seaside home of a retired doctor and his longtime wife.
As it does each year, the family has gathered on the anniversary of the death of the older son, who drowned 15 years earlier rescuing someone from the sea.
Also present are the two surviving children and their families: the daughter, who is married to a car salesman and has two kids, and the other son, an out-of-work photo restorer who recently wed a young widow and tries his best to be a father to his 10-year-old stepson.
The family sits down to dinner, during which old wounds are reopened.
The white-bearded patriarch is bitter that his surviving son didn’t become a doctor, and the son resents what he considers his dad’s pompousness.
But Kore-eda, talented director that he is, never allows the story to sink into soap-opera melodrama, and he refrains from pointing fingers.
I’m reminded of early dramas by the Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, especially his 1985 “A Time To Live and a Time To Die.”
Kore-eda, too, favors tales of family conflict, such as “Nobody Knows” (2004), in which four children — the oldest is just 12 — are abandoned in a rented Tokyo apartment.
The director has said that he wishes to try his hand at more-mainstream films. “Still Walking” — as well-crafted as it is — doesn’t fill the bill, but his just-completed “Air Doll,” in which an inflatable sex doll comes to life and falls for a video clerk, certainly seems to. We’ll just have to wait and see.
vam@nypost.com
STILL WALKING Family feud. In Japanese with English subtitles. Running time: 114 minutes. Not rated (mature themes). At the Angelika and the Lincoln Plaza.