Like Father, Like Son
Dir: Hirokazu Koreeda
2013
*****
Hirokazu Koreeda's 2013 drama Like Father, Like Son is so subtly devastating, that there are times you'll wonder what just hit you. It's the story of a hospital mix up whereby two very different couples find out that their 6 year old boys were purposefully switched by a nurse at birth. One couple is wealthy, with a strict but mostly absent father and the other is poor but involved in their children's lives and they also have other children. I'm not sure if it is a cultural thing but it seems that the normal thing to do and the decision that everyone from varying generations decides is that the boys should switch places to their biological parents. Gut-wrenching drama follows but nothing is ever played for tears, this isn't your usual Oscar-bait, it is clever and not without harsh truths being uttered. It's a brave and astonishing film and what you'd expect from the unsung and quite brilliant Hirokazu Koreeda.