NZIFF: Monster

Straight from Cannes where its intricately composed script was deservedly awarded, Kore-eda Hirokazu’s latestis a deeply affecting and morally complex drama told from multiple perspectives.

The best of Kore-eda Hirokazu’s films achieve a rare quality: a sublime everydayness, in which simple matters take on breathtaking, poetic shape... Monster initally seems to be a simple, issue-driven movie designed to yank at heartstrings. Ando Sakura, so memorable in Kore-eda’s Shoplifters, plays Saori, a dry cleaner whose son, tweenage Minato, is having some mental health difficulties. He’s quiet and moody at home, acting out at school, and in one frightening instance he seems to have a propensity for self-harm.

From here, the film leads us in unexpected directions, essentially concerning itself with how secrets, closely held by private fear and societal demand, can affect far more people than just those keeping them. Monster, at once warmly exuberant and carefully restrained, is built with the compassion and inventiveness so signature to its creator, creating a picture of life in all its hushed beauty, its gnawing ache.

Rated M