It’s taken a couple of years to get here, but it’s appropriate that Hirokazu Koreeda’s bittersweet 2008 film should earn a UK release at the same time as the Yasujiro Ozu retrospective at the BFI Southbank in London and the rerelease of Ozu’s masterpiece, Tokyo Story. Still Walking is a beautifully observed film about a family getting together to commemorate a lost son and brother many years after he died rescuing a stranger from drowning. If that sounds maudlin, it’s not. The gentle pace is offset with much acerbic humour, and for all that Koreeda (Nobody Knows) conceived the film as a fond remembrance of his own parents, the Yokoyama family is as fractious as yours and mine.
U (114min)