Tokyo Sonata
Autumn 2009 Features series
Sunday, October 4, 2009 at 4:00pm
Sunday, October 4, 2009 at 7:00pm
Acadia Cinema's Al Whittle Theatre
450 Main Street, Wolfville, NS
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Screenplay by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Max Mannix
Starring Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi, Haruka Igawa, Yu Koyanagi
Rated 14A ·
2h 0m
Japan, Netherlands and Hong Kong
Japanese
A man loses his middle-management job, is ashamed to tell his family and so continues to leave the house each morning in business attire. His lonely perfectionist wife drifts through household duties, dreaming of buying a flashy car. His restless college-age son finds purpose in life by enlisting in the U.S. Army. And his precocious, sensitive younger son secretly takes piano lessons, paying with his lunch money and practising on a broken keyboard retrieved from someone’s garbage.
The four “movements” of Tokyo Sonata may sound like a domestic melodrama, but the film transcends conventions of genre and cultural boundaries, and turns out to be one of the most compelling, finely orchestrated and oddly enchanting films of the year so far. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s draws outstanding performances in a work of tremendous passion, daring and delicacy earning him the Jury Prize – Un Certain Regard, Cannes (2008). From Jennie Punter, Globe and Mail