After the Storm – A Review By Marilyn Penn
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The first thing you’ll notice about After the Storm is the height of its star, Hiroshi Abe; in a country where the average male is 5′7″ this man is a towering 6′2″ and looks like Gregory Peck – both wonderful attributes. Except that this casting interferes with the plot. We’re asked to accept this character as a down and out writer, unable to summon the money he owes his short ex-wife for child support and reduced to borrowing from his short sister and stealing from his shorter mother. But all we can think is – are you kidding me? this guy could get a job in a minute as a model or movie star earning way more money than he did with his novel. He’d be plucked right off the sidewalk by ten different modeling or movie agents before he walked three blocks in downtown Tokyo. Imagine casting George Clooney as Willy Loman and you’ll understand the problem.
As I tried to overcome this stumbling block, I looked around the theater and saw the man next to me fast asleep, two women chatting, several others having the need to organize their handbags. It was then that I realized that I too must have nodded off as I couldn’t recollect seeing something that was clearly a prior occurrence. This is a very quiet film about some very dull people with very ordinary life problems. You need a Chekhov to make something out of soporific material and writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda is not that man. In a year in which LION featured a spectacular screen debut for irresistible young Sunny Pawar, you can’t interest audiences in a reticent boy of similar age (short) who has no screen personality As he and his father decide to weather the eponymous typhoon in a playground, we are forced to acknowledge that this is too misguided to be a good bonding moment What if a tree branch came whirling towards them to smack the very tall man in the head? The old mother comes across best of the bunch but since that’s saying so little, I can’t praise her performance either. Miss this unless you’re having serious trouble napping………………
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