TOKYO SONATA, English-subtitled edition

Starting Date:
12/13 (Sat)

Showtimes:
Week of 12/13 (Sat)- 12/19 (Fri)
4:40pm/ 7:15pm

Due to a great turnout, the screening of TOKYO SONATA, English subtitled-edition has been extended! Thank you so much for your continued support!

Week of Dec 20th (Sat) ~ 26th (Fri)
7:15pm

Week of Dec 27th (Sat)~ Jan 2nd (Fri)
4:40pm & 7:15 pm (Twice Daily)


Cinemart Roppongi
2-minute walk from Roppongi Station (Oedo Line, #5 Exit; Hibiya Line, #3 Exit)

Cinemart Roppongi 3-8-15, Minato-ku Tokyo

Tel: 03-5413-7711

■Cast
RYUHEI SASAKI　　　　　TERUYUKI KAGAWA
MEGUMI SASAKI　　　　 KYOKO KOIZUMI
KANEKO　　　　　　　　 HARUKA IGAWA
KUROSU　　　　　　　　 KANJI TSUDA
TAKASHI SASAKI　　　　YU KOYANAGI
KENJI SASAKI　　　　　 KAI INOWAKI
THIEF　　　　　　　　　 KOJI YAKUSHO

■SYNOPSIS
TOKYO SONATA is a portrait of a seemingly ordinary Japanese family. The father who abruptly loses his job conceals the truth from his family; the eldest son in college hardly returns home; the youngest son furtively takes piano lessons without telling his parents; and the mother, who knows deep down that her role is to keep the family together, cannot find the will to do so. From the exterior, all is normal and the same. But somehow, a single, unforeseeable chasm has appeared within the family, only to spread ever so quietly and quickly to disintegrate them.

In the hands of world famous director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, known for his thrillers and movies of suspense, this story will probe the dark side of human nature and the social problems that confront contemporary Japan. Kurosawa’s portrayal of the breakdown and redemption of Japan’s “ordinary family” will be every bit as gripping as his previous works.

Running Time 【119 minutes】
　
　　
■"TOKYO SONATA" Reviews from the international critics;
　
☆http://www.timeout.com/chicago/articles/film/60231/canada-dry
Among other small-scale pleasures, the fest featured three extended homages to the master of the Japanese family drama, Yasujiro Ozu. Hirokazu Kore-eda's Still Walking takes a typically Ozuian family and ups the dysfunction level, along with the sentimentality. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's sensationally shot Tokyo Sonata was even more interesting; the sonata that closes it notwithstanding, it often suggests silent Ozu?particularly Tokyo Chorus?in its themes and visual comedy, although the political anxiety and left-field third act are pure Kurosawa.
　
　
☆http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision/2008/09/toronto_international_film_fes_16.html
Without a film at Toronto in five years, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's surreal family deconstruction Tokyo Sonata finds the director refreshingly close to his finest film (though his 2001 Pulse will forever top that list.) After a man loses his "administration" job at the office, his desperation to keep it secret from his family leads the film into some startling scenes, stirring up fears of feeling useless and helpless.
　
　
☆http://www.artforum.com/film/id=21100
The ground rules of the "new globalized order" put Kiyoshi Kurosawa's family drama Tokyo Sonata (2008) into motion when the family's patriarch loses his job to Chinese white-collar workers who cost (he is told) one-third of what he does. Unable to bear the thought of losing his authority in the household, he doesn't break the news to his family. For much of its duration, the film works in a keen and observant dramatic-realist vein?although with Kurosawa's wry sense of humor ever-present. But in the last thirty minutes, it takes an abrupt, auto-destructive turn that can either be praised as a rupturing, Surrealist gesture or bemoaned as a crazy, failed experiment. Kurosawa is an undeniably gifted and innovative filmmaker, but until I hear the critical case to the contrary, I'll be in the skeptics' corner.
　
　
☆http://www.timeout.com/newyork/tonyblog/?p=6671
One more rager? Koji Yakusho in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata, a P.T. Anderson?like domestic meltdown that gets so off-the-hinges crazy in its last 40 minutes, you wish the first 80 were equally awesome. Koji doesn't show up until halfway in, but when he does, ripping off his ski mask and venting furiously (he's the most inept criminal ever), the film immediately ignites.
　
　
☆http://www.exclaim.ca/musicreviews/latestsub.aspx?csid1=125&csid2=870&fid1=33484
Tokyo Sonata
Directed by Kivoshi Kurosawa
By Travis Mackenzie Hoover

Kiyoshi Kurosawa abandons his genre roots for this bizarre drama, which is not entirely satisfactory but is never less than strange and affecting.

When a salary man finds himself downsized by his company, he decides to hide the fact from his family; his wife suspects, his youngest son wanders off and his eldest indulges a stupid fantasy of helping the world through fighting in Iraq. Nobody communicates and when the youngest pursues his penchant for piano, and becomes a prodigy, things get tense.

It's a great deal more complicated than all that, and the exact nuances of the plot explode in a deeply weird set of climaxes, but Kurosawa's trying very hard to deal in a direct way with the unease that has permeated his more commercial projects, and his roping in of poverty, generational conflict and the deteriorating world around him is affecting even when it's awkward. His sympathy is never in doubt and neither is his sincerity.

True, the weirdness of the plot doesn't hold a patch to some of his mysterious philosophical horror movies, and the literalness of the narrative line hobbles his ability to hit some of his earlier high notes. He's too often on the nose with his political pedagogy, and a few developments smack less of drama than melodrama. But it's still a very brave stab at expanding his range and bodes well for things to come.

Kurosawa is an artist looking for new ways to make movies. When he gets where he's going it's going to be beautiful and you'll need this to fully appreciate the trajectory of his development. Bonus: the Koji Yakusho cameo is hilarious.
　
　
☆http://www.slantmagazine.com/blog/default.asp?category=5
Tokyo Sonata: Famous for his J-horror modern classics (Cure, Pulse), Kiyoshi Kurosawa is better described as an architect of inexorably spiraling dread. This family drama is being hailed as a departure from earlier genre pictures, but the stark mood is less a break from than a continuation of Kurosawa's view of the fragility of the world's surface normalcy. (The mix of unsettling lighting and oft-comic digressions is fascinating: When a character is caught entering a house by hopping through a window, it's like a Capra bit of business suddenly given Jacques Tourneur's mise-en-sc?Gne.) The cracks behind the wallpaper start to show as a well-off executive is unceremoniously downsized and takes to numbly wandering the streets, too ashamed to face his family. Meanwhile, the mother feels like a nonentity, and the youngest son slides into apathy after his wish to learn to play the piano is refused. The extraordinary thing is the way Kurosawa systematically dismantles the fabrics of the nuclear family, only to put them back together in an ambivalent ending that
would have Michael Haneke yanking on his beard in envy.
　
　　
☆Toronto International Film Festival
http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/tiff-2008-wrap-up-simons-yays-and-nays#extended

☆Globes opens borders to foreign films
http://www.variety.com/awardcentral_article/VR1117996489.html?nav=news&categoryid=1983&cs=1

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