Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Wed 29 Feb only

Yoji Yamada / Japan / 2010 / 126 mins

The black sheep of the family is rarely a colourful or endearing figure of fiction. More often than not they are like Tetsuro (Tsurube Shofukutei): selfish, childish and destructive, but the ties that bind are strong and sometimes impossible to cut. So finds Ginko (Sayuri Yoshinga), the quiet respectable widowed owner of a small town pharmacy in this gentle, affecting and emotional slice of life from director Yoji Yamada.

Despite ruining her daughter’s wedding, having to use her savings to bail him out of his debts and constantly apologising for his appalling and loutish behaviour, Ginko can’t quite find it in her heart to break the family bonds even when it costs her her own happiness.

This could’ve been the portrait of a put upon woman, downtrodden by her sense of honour and duty, but thanks mainly to Sayuri Yoshinaga’s engrossing performance: subtle, dignified and heartbreaking (an exercise in “less is more” acting) – this film instead is a story of compassion, strength and constancy in the face of trials and a fast changing Japan. Shofukutei’s character could have been a caricatured, oafish drunk but here again there’s something deeper and more multi-layered at play with the film’s ending having an especially powerful poignancy offset by Shofukutei’s earlier clownishness.

This film was well rewarded at the Japanese equivalent to the Oscars and it’s easy to see why, as this is a film that challenges preconceptions of cultural traits and old ideas of honour, family and responsibility but does so with warmth and wit. Sentimental but never mawkish, and an insight into modern Japanese culture from the inside-out, this is mostly a film about families which transcends any national boundaries. Perhaps not every family has someone with the tolerance of Ginko but almost every one has Tetsuro hidden away somewhere and that’s what makes this picture such a relatable gem.