The delicate domestic balance shared by Taeko (Fumino Kimura) and her second husband, Jiro (Kento Nagayama), in their quiet home in a port town in southern Japan is upended when a tragedy strikes the family, in this wrenching Japanese melodrama from Kôji Fukada (best known for the 2016 Cannes prize-winner Harmonium). Relations are further strained by the arrival of Taeko’s deaf and seemingly vulnerable ex-husband, Park (Atom Sunada), back into her life. Since Taeko is the only person who can communicate with him – Park speaks Korean sign language – the responsibility for his care falls to her. But as the film’s elegant framing reveals, the gap between Taeko and Jiro, both physical and emotional, grows ever wider. It’s a solid, sensitively handled study of the aftermath of a trauma, elevated by tricky, unexpected revelations about Park.
