Monster review: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s beautifully judged drama explores guilt and innocence in a Japanese school

Nominated for the Palme d’Or last year at Cannes, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster was unlucky not to be in the mix for the Best International Feature Oscar: it’s a complex psychological drama that plays with your sympathies and prejudices throughout. Indeed, there’s something of Kurosawa’s Rashomon about the film, which retells a string of schoolroom incidents from three very different points of view.

In a small provincial Japanese city, Saori (Sakura Ando) is raising her pre-teen son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) alone. Her partner died recently, and Minato frets about living up to his late father’s image. One night, a building near their apartment block catches fire and burns to the ground.

Monster - Trailer

It housed a seedy hostess bar, and Minato hears a social media rumour that his teacher Mr Hori (Eita Nagayama) was seen coming out of it. This may predispose Saori to think poorly of the teacher, and she rushes to judgement when her son comes home from school with a bruise, and claims that Hori hit him.

Minato, in any case, has begun behaving oddly: cutting his own hair without warning, and quietly chanting, “Who’s the monster?” Something is clearly awry but when Saori rocks up to the school to protest, she’s met with an opaque wall of politeness.

The school principal (Yuko Tanaka) expresses her regrets, but refuses to let Saori confront Mr Hori. And when Saori finally does meet the teacher, Hori claims that Minato was bullying another student, a sensitive, dreamy boy called Eri (Hinata Hiiragi).

Our point of view then shifts from the anguished mother to Mr Hori, who emerges as a much more benevolent and kindly figure than we had imagined. He is worried about Minato’s apparently aggressive behaviour, but is entirely motivated by concern for Eri, who is already being bullied by others.

Hori is concerned enough to visit Eri’s house, where he meets the boy’s father, Kiyotaka (Shido Nakamura), an abusive alcoholic and the possible source of the strange insults Minato and Eri have been chanting. Kiyotaka has become convinced that his son is gay, an aberration so far as he is concerned that must be stamped out. The ramifications of his actions will be far reaching, and in the last part of the film, told from Minato’s point of view, we finally discover the truth about what happened at the school.

Or do we? Monster’s elegiac ending is either a wistful coda, or an olive branch of hope. In previous films, like Shoplifters and After the Storm, Hirokazu Kore-eda has offered glimpses into the hard lives of people on the edge of Japanese society. His characters are never one-dimensional, and rise and fall in our estimation as we watch.

This is certainly true of Monster, which seems to be a treatise on the evils of rushing to judgement. To all the teachers she confronts, Saori seems like a harpy; yet she’s a poor and busy single mother, fiercely fighting her son’s corner. Minato will be accused of being a bully but is, in reality, a kind and loyal child confronting sexual and emotional issues he is ill-equipped to deal with.

Mr Hori is ultimately guilty of nothing more than being a poor salesman. Even the shifty headmaster has troubles of her own, having been inadvertently responsible for the death of her grandson.

Monster culminates in a violent rainstorm, on the other side of which lies heartbreak, or hope. Reviews of the film have tended to voice frustrations about the plot’s complexity, and Kore-eda’s refusal to commit to a final, unifying truth. But I love the way the story keeps you constantly thinking, and forces you to empathise with characters you might have been on the point of hating.

And the chorus of bows and humble apologies that greet Saori when she comes to the school to protest is quintessential Japan, where loss of face is an existential disaster almost impossible to negotiate.

​In cinemas only

Rating: Five stars

Drive-Away Dolls (16, 84mins)

When you make a comic crime caper and the name Coen is above the title, unhelpful comparisons are inevitable. Drive-Away Dolls, which Ethan Coen directs, and co-wrote with his wife Tricia Cooke, is not as good as Raising Arizona, not a patch on Fargo — but then again, was it ever going to be? Our story begins in 1990s Philadelphia, where young lesbians Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Jamie (Margaret Qualley) have very different approaches to their sexuality. While Jamie is gleefully promiscuous, Marian is shy and bookish.

They don’t get along too well, but are thrust together when they find a bag of money and a human head in the trunk of their rental car. To whom this head belongs need not detain us: suffice to say that Marian and Jamie find themselves pursued by two hapless goons in the employ of The Chief (a woefully underused Colman Domingo). Matt Damon shows up in an amusing cameo, Beanie Feldstein is very funny as a hot-headed lesbian cop, and Geraldine Viswanathan brings depth to a flimsy role. But ultimately, Drive-Away Dolls feels slight and derivative, a knock-off Coen brothers’ film.

​In cinemas only

Rating: Three stars

​Irish Wish (Netflix, 93mins)

Somewhere in the mid-Atlantic lies a misty, giddy island that corresponds to Irish-American notions of Erin: our story happens there.

Harried Manhattan book editor Maddie Kelly (Lindsay Lohan) has fallen in love with Paul Kennedy (Alexander Vlahos), a dimwitted Irish author. Tragically, he has fallen for Maddie’s best friend Heather, and she must endure a trip to the auld sod for a lavish wedding. Paul’s family live in a gaff so grand it makes Versailles look shabby, and Maddie is wandering the grounds when she wishes aloud that she was marrying Paul, not realising that an impish Saint Brigid (Dawn Bradfield) loiters nearby.

When she wakes up, her dream comes true: she is about to marry Paul but meanwhile, has begun to have feelings for James Thomas (Ed Speleers), an itinerant English photographer.

There’ve been loads of these films, from Leap Year to PS I Love You, and Irish Wish is not so epically dreadful as either of those. We do get diddly music, leppin’ locals, and Paul, who claims to be Irish, dresses like Rishi Sunak: his safety could not be guaranteed if he showed his face here. It’s silly, but entirely inoffensive.

On Netflix only

​Rating: Two stars