Tag: child-rearing

Mama’s Affair
(A Ma You Zuo
Di Er Ge,
阿媽有咗第二個)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 19 August 2022
No Comments on Mama’s Affair
(A Ma You Zuo
Di Er Ge,
阿媽有咗第二個)
Sticky post

Director – Kearen Pang – 2022 – Hong Kong – Cert. PG – 127m

A former music business exec tries to get back into the game managing a boy singer while her jealous teenage son takes his exams – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 19th

Essentially a three-hander, this centres around middle-aged mother Mei-fung (Teresa Mo Shun-kwan from Hard Boiled, John Woo, 1992; Over My Dead Body, Ho Cheuk Tin, 2022), her son, Jonathan (Jer Lau) who is doing exams and hopes to study at the UK’s Cambridge and similarly aged youth Fang Ching (Keung To). The two teenagers are played by members of phenomenally successful Cantopop boy band Mirror, arguably the production’s main selling point. It also has an unashamed music industry focus. Mei-fung, whose marriage is on the rocks, is a former record label executive who has decided to go back to the workplace now that her son is on the verge of going abroad.

She originally got out of the business at the insistence of her husband following a miscarriage. She was something of a workaholic, necessitated by her job of looking after talent, babysitting stars to the extent that juggling career and potential motherhood was well nigh impossible.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

A Far Shore
(Tooi Tokoro,
遠いところ)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 6 July 2022
No Comments on A Far Shore
(Tooi Tokoro,
遠いところ)
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Director – Masaaki Kudo – 2022 – Japan – 128m

****

An underage Okinawa bar hostess attempts to raise her small son while worsening circumstances conspire against her – world premiere in the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) 2022 which runs from Friday, July 1st to Saturday, July 9th

A man in Okinawa club Night Babylon asks her age of a hostess: “you don’t seem very old”. It turns out the girls in question are under 18 (the legal age limit for working there; in Japan, it’s also illegal to consume alcohol under the age of 20). In fact, these girls are 17 and proud of the fact that in “wild Okinawa”, the hostesses in bars are so young. The hostesses in question are Aoi (Kotono Hanase) and her friend Mio (Yumemi Ishida), and when not working, they like to party hard, for instance to celebrate a friend’s birthday, which involves much drinking and dancing in a club. There don’t appear to be any men in their immediate peer group: they’re all women.

Once she returns home from her club night shift, Aoi calls in on her grandmother to pick up her two-year-old son Kengo (Tsuki Hasegawa).… Read the rest

Tags age limit, alcohol, assault, bar hostess, bathroom, chase, child-rearing, compensation settlement, drinking, drinking club, employment, financial hardship, financial pressures, gambling, grandmother, hiding money, hospital bill, hostess, hostess work, hostessing, hourly rate, illegal, illegal alcohol consumption, Japan, job, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary 2022, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2022, Kotono Hanase, KVIFF, legal drinking age, make ends meet, Masaaki Kudo, Okinawa, parents and children, partying, police raid, prostitution, pursued by cops, rent, shirking responsibility, single mother, small child, small son, social services, social services snoopers, Tsuki Hasegawa, underage, unfit mother, unfit parent, violence, wife-beating, work, Yoshiro Sakuma, Yumemi Ishida

Features Live Action Movies

True Mothers
(Asa Ga Kuru,
朝が来る)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 16 April 2021
No Comments on True Mothers
(Asa Ga Kuru,
朝が来る)

Director – Naomi Kawase – 2020 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 140m

*****

An unmarried mum hands her child over to adoptive parents only to later decide that she wants the child back – Japan’s entry for the 2020/2021 Oscars is screening on Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, April 16th

Naomi Kawase’s new film True Mothers deals with the interface between unwanted teen pregnancy and infertility among married couples and was Japan’s entry for this year’s Best International Feature Film at the Oscars. Sadly, it didn’t make the Academy’s shortlist. However, UK audiences up and down the land will now be able to see it on Curzon Home Cinema. It had a brief UK big screen outing late last year at the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF), which, after several months of touch-and-go somewhat incredibly went ahead days before the UK went back into total lockdown.

Former documentarian Kawase has been getting a lot of exposure in the UK in recent years with both Sweet Bean (2015) and The Mourning Forest (2007) released here on Eureka! Video and Still the Water (2014) currently available on MUBI and BFI Player. I like Kawase but I must admit True Mothers sounded like it might be terrible.… Read the rest