reviews from guardian and yahoo
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Hirokazu Kore-eda is the Japanese director whose breakthrough movie, After-Life, is gradually assuming cult status.
It is a fantasy based on the idea that, after your death, you are asked to recall the most purely happy moment in your life so that it can be eternally re-created for your enjoyment.
His follow-up, Distance - at Cannes in 2001 - was widely considered disappointing.
However, his latest film, Nobody Knows (in Japanese, Daremo Shirinai) is a satisfying reminder of this director's talent for extending a single moment with superbly poised artistry.
Keiko is a single mum with four kids by different fathers, played here by the Japanese columnist and TV personality known simply as You.
Flaky and irresponsible, she effectively sub-contracts parental duties to her eldest boy, 12-year-old Akira (Yuya Yagira) while she takes off with various boyfriends for days at a time.
And then one day she simply never comes back, leaving Akira quite alone with his little sisters Kyoko (Ayu Kitaura), Yuki (Momoko Shimizu) and brother Shigeru (Hiei Kimura).
Akira has to provide for them as best he can while concealing the situation from any adult authority, especially the landlord, who is aware of only one child in their apartment.
The others have had to be smuggled in, hiding in suitcases: a stratagem that is recalled in the movie's terrifying and heart-stoppingly sad ending.
Kore-eda patiently tracks the children's secret existence as un-adult adults, minute by minute, with gentleness and acute observation.
They do not become feral, but maintain, with a weird and moving dignity, the best semblance of family life possible as their flat becomes more and more run down.
They are four souls alone in their own universe, abandoned and unloved like believers whose Creator has turned his back on them.
Kore-eda gets miraculously fresh performances from the children and the film is absorbing, humane and deeply moving.
****
The true story of four children abandoned by their mother to fend for themselves shocked Japan, but it prompted director Hirokazu Kore-eda to imagine the people behind the tabloid headlines.
The result is "Nobody Knows," a sparse and poetic vision of childhood which had hardened critics fighting back tears at the Cannes film festival.
The picture is one of 19 vying for the Palme d'Or best film award following the last-minute addition of documentary "Mondovino" to the competition slate.
Using amateur actors and filming mainly in a cramped Tokyo apartment, the former documentary maker traces the children's descent into neglect but also celebrates moments of joy.
"It is indeed a pretty shocking story, but I did not want to take a journalistic approach to the subject," Kore-eda told a news conference, where some of the younger cast members struggled to peer over their microphones.
"Instead, I wanted to show these children from the inside, what they were going through, the energy they have to survive, their feelings, their closeness," he added.
The siblings all have different fathers and have never been to school. Their landlord and neighbours are unaware of the existence of three of them, who are never allowed to go out.
One day their mother disappears, leaving money and a note asking her eldest son, Akira, to take care of the brood. After a brief visit, she exits their lives forever.
The children do not immediately understand their loss and soldier on. As the money dries up, their life gradually collapses. Water and electricity is cut off and they have to scavenge for food.
In scenes filmed chronologically over a year, the cast, aged from six to 14, give spellbinding performances. Yuya Yagira, who plays Akira, is the focal point of the story, which incorporates real-life details such as the moment when his voice breaks.
Kore-eda did not give his actors a script and kept rehearsals to a minimum to keep the dialogue fresh.
"Neither the children nor myself are sure in this film what is real and what is fiction, whether each person is playing themselves or portraying a character," he said.
In a key scene, the children celebrate spring by venturing outside for the first time in months. But their elation is soon followed by a tragedy that seems inevitable.
Throughout, the adults surrounding them appear unwilling or unable to respond to obvious signs of distress. But Kore-eda refrains from passing judgement, even on the mother.
"I wanted to make the role of the mother very human. I thought that if at the end of the film, people left the movie blaming the mother and saying she was atrocious, then I would have failed," he said.
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