Written for RAF News June 2017

After the death of his father, Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) moves back home with his elderly mother to get things in order, finding that he doesn’t have much anymore. He doesn’t have enough money to pay child welfare for the son he rarely sees, to the ex-wife that he still loves but who has moved on without him.

The storm of the title could be the typhoon that is due to hit Tokyo anytime now – but it could also refer to the reckoning of Ryota at this moment in time. A once promising writer who has settled as a private investigator with a gambling problem, he isn’t the man he wanted to be. A deeply flawed character who has charm but is sad and saddening. His vulnerability is so great that at one point he asks a colleague to stop being so nice to him for fear that he might start crying.

In this family drama there is an authenticity to the everyday tragedy, to the realisation that things don’t always work out. That being said, the film does have a sense of humour, embodied perfectly by Ryota’s mother in a phenomenal performance by Kirin Kiki which gracefully moves from funny to poignant and back again.

After the Storm is meditative but not slow, full of neatly packaged details and symbols that add a poetic kind of depth to the characters and their relationships. Offering a sweet and unsensational slice of life that doesn’t try to dress anything up or tie it with a bow, it gives us something more realistic and soulful as result.