Ah, Haru on AllMovie

Veteran director Shinji Somai lensed this heart-warming family drama about a shabby looking coot claiming to be the father of an elite salaryman. Hiroshi Nirasaki (Koichi Sato) is a securities broker desperately trying to keep the fact that his company is about to go belly-up from his high-strung upper-class wife (Yuki Saito). One day, while walking home from a particularly bad day at work, he gets accosted by an old bum (Tsutomu Yamazaki) who demands to be taken in by his son. Though his mother told him that his dad died when he was born, the drunken geezer knows enough about him and his short order cook mother (Sumiko Fuji) that he is almost convinced. Hiroshi takes him to his large traditional home -- the house of his wife's deceased well-to-do father -- to meet his wife Mizuho (Yuki Saito), his snooty mother-in-law (Shiho Fujimura), and his school-aged son (Keita Okada). Dad immediately makes his presence felt by demanding his fatherly rights and by generally acting crude and obnoxious. Mizuho and her mother can't stand him; Hiroshi's son on the other hand loves the reckless charm of his new grandfather. This film won the FIPRESCI Award given by the International Film Critics Federation at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival.