Film
Nobody Knows
- Director
- Hirokazu Kore-eda
- Certificate
- 12A
- Running Time
- 141 mins
Based on a true story from 1988, which made headlines around the world and was far more grisly than anything depicted here, this is the non-judgemental tale of a feckless, immature, yet oddly likeable mother who abandons her four young children in a cramped apartment. We first meet Keiko (played by a Japanese TV star known only as You), as she moves into her new home with 12-year-old son Akira (Yuya Yagira), having apparently left her previous address in some haste. The reason soon becomes clear. As their bulky suitcases are unzipped, three more children emerge gasping for breath. Keiko tells them that they must make no sound and never leave the flat, or even venture out onto the veranda, for fear of attracting attention. During her increasingly long absences, resourceful Akira is left in charge, eking out the few thousand Yen he’s left to feed and clothe his siblings. But their precarious existence goes into meltdown when the money runs out, utilities are cut off and a tragedy ensues – all unnoticed by neighbours or the authorities.
The impressive Yuya Yagira was a surprise but well-deserved winner of the Best Actor award at Cannes back in 2004. Remarkably, like most of the cast, he’s a non-professional who was simply fed his lines by director Hirokazu Kore-eda as the film was shot chronologically over the course of a year. The camera only leaves the apartment with the children, so we never find out what Keiko actually does while she’s away, though there’s a suggestion of a string of boyfriends who know nothing of her circumstances. Similarly, the film ends before the scandal breaks, its sole focus being on the slow degeneration of these abandoned kids as they fall through the cracks in a regimented, outwardly affluent society.
It’s back on screen in the Watershed’s comprehensive Of Flesh & Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda season.
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