Inspired by actual events, proclaims the preface, though events of any kind are a little difficult to put a finger on. Set in today's Tokyo, it details the plight, through microscopic minutiae, of four young children left to fend for themselves when abandoned, first for a month and then for longer, by their single mother. (Their father lives in the vicinity, but doesn't appear to be an option.) The basic situation might bring to mind, for those with long memories, Jack Clayton's Our Mother's House, in which a whole passel of children, fearful of the orphanage, bury their bedridden mother in the backyard upon her demise, and strive to carry on as if nothing has happened: a meaningful and ultimately very moving enactment of the universal reluctance to grow up. This, though, is the sort of comparison that's said to be invidious, because it comes down so heavily to one side's advantage. Director Hirokazu Kore-eda, of After Life, unspools his story in a noodling, undiscriminating, time-wasting manner, and in frosty or ashen color, so disengaging that the tale can regain no grip even as the children's funds run low and the utilities get cut off. The children themselves, at any rate, are convincingly childlike, especially the twelve-year-old oldest boy. But at two hours and twenty minutes, the movie seems indisputably overlong. Any dispute would have to center on precisely how soon that complaint can be lodged. A half-hour earlier? An hour? An hour and a half? (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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