In Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Like Father, Like Son,” two sets of parents have learned that their children were switched at birth. Now with the kids at age 6, the parents must consider “swapping.” It’s a scenario that seems not entirely plausible, and at worst seems to set up the audience for something tragic.
I can think of a dozen ways in which Kore-eda’s film could’ve ended that would’ve made me feel miserable. It avoids them all and feels more real as a result. “Like Father, Like Son” is one of the loveliest films of the year in the way it touches on these major choices and decisions in life with a feather touch.
The film opens delicately. The young boy Keita is attending a pre-school interview, which seems harsh in its stark wide-shot framing and tough questions for a 6-year-old, but Keita tells a little white lie to help his chances and everyone leaves smiling. It hints at the tone Kore-eda is playing with, one that is significant but also cheerful and never impossibly grim.
Keita is being put into this private school by his parents Ryota (Fukurama Masaharu) and Midori Nonomiya (Ono Machiko), a wealthy family with strict rules, high expectations for a gifted son and a truly loving household. Whereas another film might be more cynical about an imperfect child or playing up the father’s long work hours as a detriment, Kore-eda operates on these more picturesque, yet ordinary family dynamics.
Ryota and Midori soon learn that Keita was switched at birth in a clerical accident, and the hospital brokers a meeting between the Nonomiyas and the Saikis, a more middle class family with three children, the oldest of whom is Ryusei, the Nonomiyas’ biological son.
The two families get along well and the children do even better, and in addition to an option to sue the hospital, the two families tenuously discuss the possibility of swapping children before either starts school and gets too attached to their home life. Continue reading “Like Father, Like Son”