husbands and wives Archives - Page 11 of 11

The Pain Of Separation

Custody

Directed by Xavier Legrand.

Certificate 15, 93 minutes

Released 13 April 2018

Husband Antoine (Denis Ménochet) and wife Miriam (Léa Drucker), whose marriage has fallen apart, attend a custody hearing regarding their son Julien (Thomas Gioria) who is 11. Their daughter Joséphine (Mathilde Auneveux) being almost 18 will soon be considered an adult under French law and is therefore legally regarded as able to take care of herself.

Antoine wants custody so he can look after and spend time with Julien at weekends. Miriam doesn’t want to grant him this. She wants as little to do with Antoine as possible. Each partner makes accusations against the other. As the judge says, it’s a question of who is telling the bigger lies. But the judge must make her decision based on this brief hearing. So Antoine will be allowed custody at weekends… [Read more]

Full review published in Reform magazine, 2018.

Trailer:

One Night
(Hitoyo,
ひとよ)

Director – Kazuya Shiraishi – 2019 – Japan – Cert. N/C 15+ – 123m

****1/2

A woman murders her violent husband after years of his beating up the kids, goes to prison then returns 15 years later to find the siblings in turmoil – played online in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2021 in the UK

A night of torrential rain proves a defining moment in the lives of the Inamura family which owns and runs a taxi business. Koharu (Yuko Tanaka – Princess Mononoke, 1997) enters, dressed in her usual suit she wears to drive customers around, to announce to her three teenager children, “I’ve just killed your father. Nobody will ever beat you again. You can live however you want. You’re totally free.” Expressing no remorse and convinced she’s done the right thing, she promises to return in fifteen years then disappears to hand herself in to the cops.

Koharu’s designs of freeing her kids from their father’s years of violent abuse don’t quite play out the way she had hoped. Their father would beat them for any suggestion that they’d want to do anything other than work in the family taxi business. The eldest Daiki (Ryohei Suzuki – Our Little Sister, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2015; Tokyo Tribe, Sion Sono, 2014) is a stutterer whose relationship with wife Fumiko (Megumi) is mired in divorce proceedings as he struggles to hold down a regular job.… Read the rest