AllMovie

With an eye to Yasujiro Ozu's masterpiece Tokyo Story (1953), director Jun Ichikawa creates this drama about a dysfunctional family. Fourteen-year-old Shimotsuki, like most Japanese students her age, is struggling through studying for high school entrance exams -- until her world is shattered when her parents, who try to maintain a living as the failing comedy duo Harumi and Ryusuke, suddenly divorce after her father has a child by another woman. For a while, her parents still try to maintain the comedy until her deadbeat father disappears, devastating her mother. Shimotsuki decides that enough is enough and goes to look for Dad. Ichikawa is interested not only in creating a compelling narrative but also in bringing out Osaka's unique culture.