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Reiko (You) moves into a new appartment with her 4 kids, aged from 5 to 12
years. However, in order to keep the appartment, she claims to have only 1 kid,
Akira (Yagira Yuya), while smuggles the others - Kyoko (Kitaura Ayu), Shigeru
(Kimura Hiei) & little Yuki (Shimizu Momoko) - into the appartment in
suitcases & tells them to permanently hide inside the flat while she's out
working of partying & Akira looks after the household ... of course none of
the kids go to school.
After this goes well for a while, Reiko tells Akira she has found a new
lover, & if the relationship between them works out, she & the children
will move in with him into a big house. However, tha man doesn't know about her
children yet ...
The next day, Akira finds a note of his mum, telling him that she has left
for a businesstrip, & with the money she has left him he should look after
his siblings.
This goes well for a while (since Akira is used to look after his siblings
anyway), & when the money runs out, he gets some more from 2 of Reiko's
ex-boyfriends - both of whom think they are the father of little Yuki.
One evening, out of the blue, Reiko is back, & she & the kids
celebrate their reunion ... it is however only a few days before she leaves
again, not without promising to be back before Christmas. But Christmas comes
& goes without Reiko, & Akira - not wanting to disappoint the others -
writes some Christmascards in her name &, together with some money, hands
them out to his siblings.
Wandering the streets on his own - his siblings are still hiding in the
appartment - Akira befriends a few schoolboys & invites them to his own
home to an endless party of videogames - much to the dismay of his brother
& sisters, who feel bullied by the boys. Akira's friendship with them
however breaks when they want to force him to steal something from the
supermarket - which Akira, despite having little money, would never do ...
Soon the money of the kids runs out, & they can't afford anymore to pay
water-, gas-, electricity- of phonebills, so out of necessity (since there's
water & toilets in a nearby park) they decide to no longer hide in the
appartment but go out on a regular basis. In the park they meet Saki (Kan
Hanae), a sad teenage girl who soon becomes their friend, & helps Akira
taking care of them. He even develops an interest in her, but when he realises
she's a kid-prostitute (out of choice), he breaks up with her.
However, things worsen in the household, & then Yuki falls off a chair,
bumps her head, & withut proper treatment dies. Akira has to go back to
Saki to ask for her help, to - in a suitcase - take dead little Yuki to the
airport - he has always promised her to one day show her the airplanes - &
bury her there ....
Based on the true story who has left her four kids to care for themselves,
director Koreeda Hirakazu (thankfully) takes great care in letting anyone know
that his film is not a true story but a fictious one based on one true fact.
He
also takes great care in not telling the story in a tried-and-true way of
making the mother the villainess, with the children reliving hardship after
hardship to finally be saved by the welfare system - on the contrary, the
mother is portrayed as a rather likeable - if very careless -, funloving character, the
kids are allowed their moments of happiness amidst the chaos of their lives,
& when someone suggests to Akira to turn to the welfare system he claims he
already did that once & it was much worse than the situation they are in
now. Another big plus the film has is that it refuses to show the common
heartwarming moments a story like this would suggest, which at the same time
would render the film meaningless though ... however, in all the film is a tad
too long to remain really gripping throughout - at some point it just has
become clear to pretty much everyone that the kids manage to make take care of
themselves, long before the movie quits trying to make that point.
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find Nobody Knows at adultvideouniverse.com
