Like Father, Like Son | Film review - Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda's tale of boys switched at birth

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Like Father Like Son

Like Father Like Son

A workaholic Tokyo architect and his wife discover that their six-year-old boy was switched at birth with another baby, the son of working-class shopkeepers in Like Father, Like Son. The two families unite to sue the hospital, but the question of what to do next proves far harder to resolve.

Director Hirokazu Kore-eda, maker of the superb Ozu-like family dramas Still Walking and Our Little Sister, drives home the differences between the two fathers: one a chilly, driven professional (Masaharu Fukushima); the other warm and easy-going (Lily Franky). But his film is far subtler than you might first imagine and its resolution is gentle and touchingly redemptive.

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Certificate PG. Runtime 121 mins. Director Hirokazu Kore-eda

Like Father, Like Son is showing on Sky Cinema Premiere and is available on Blu-ray & DVD from Arrow Films.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL3MQ9VNjmI

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Jason Best
Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.