Saw this after recently watching "Shoplifting" from the same director. Both dealing with lost children and poverty in Japan.
While "Shoplifting" focused on a constructed family, here we have a deserted one. The mother (an actress known as "You" fwiw) is absent and abandoning, seemingly a child herself in giddy ignorance. Her role is to provide gifts and little else.
I don't think it was the director's intention, but the notion of fairytales and children cut free from their parents came to my mind at times. More likely, the director wanted to underscore that with a little nourishment, all children can grow like the plants on the veranda, and yet their lives are precarious. But this kind of misery is easy to look past, through or over. Hence the title "Nobody Knows" ....and yet some do.
Scenes involving the corner store clerks stood out for me. Two instances where people perhaps closer to the margins of society were more keenly aware of those well excluded from those margins. A little beneficence was welcomed.
The film itself lacks some adult supervision, growing a bit more like a weed in different directions at times, and mostly rides upon the excellent work of the then young actor Yuya Yagira. This was his debut, and checking up on him now he has been acting ever since.
Much is asked of him on camera, and off. As an actor, I believe he received tremendous support, much less than the character he portrayed.
While "Shoplifting" focused on a constructed family, here we have a deserted one. The mother (an actress known as "You" fwiw) is absent and abandoning, seemingly a child herself in giddy ignorance. Her role is to provide gifts and little else.
I don't think it was the director's intention, but the notion of fairytales and children cut free from their parents came to my mind at times. More likely, the director wanted to underscore that with a little nourishment, all children can grow like the plants on the veranda, and yet their lives are precarious. But this kind of misery is easy to look past, through or over. Hence the title "Nobody Knows" ....and yet some do.
Scenes involving the corner store clerks stood out for me. Two instances where people perhaps closer to the margins of society were more keenly aware of those well excluded from those margins. A little beneficence was welcomed.
The film itself lacks some adult supervision, growing a bit more like a weed in different directions at times, and mostly rides upon the excellent work of the then young actor Yuya Yagira. This was his debut, and checking up on him now he has been acting ever since.
Much is asked of him on camera, and off. As an actor, I believe he received tremendous support, much less than the character he portrayed.