Movie Review: ‘Like Father, Like Son’

Riddled with the complexities of father-son relationships, the occasional laugh and a rather unfortunate revelation, “Like Father, Like Son” delicately depicts the story of two families that find themselves struggling with the notion of nature versus nurture.

With previous films such as 2011’s “I Wish,” the story of two young brothers who are separated by their mother and father’s failed marriage and 2008’s “Still Walking,” about a family grieving for their dead son, Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda continues to explore the intricacies of the fragmented home.

While continuing along the lines of less-than-perfect family ties, “Like Father, Like Son” seems to stand out among Koreeda’s other films. Before plunging the audience into the undeniably painful revelation that two 6-year-old boys, Keita (Keita Ninomiya) and Ryuesi (Shôgen Hwang), were purposefully switched at birth, Koreeda sets up a contrast between the two families.

Beginning first with Ryota (Masaharu Fukuyama) and Midori (Machiko Ono), parents of Keita, Koreeda exhibits the comfortable life of two middle-class parents with a rather strict and disciplined parenting style. Though only 6 years old, Keita is expected to fulfill a plethora of demanding responsibilities more suitable for a full-grown adult. No matter the task, Keita is expected to realize his responsibilities to the best of his ability and then some, his age never taken into account.

At the same time, Koreeda delves into the other side of the spectrum. Appliance storeowners Yudai Saiki (Lily Franky) and Yukari Saiki (Yôko Maki), parents of Ryuesi, couldn’t be more different from Keita’s parents. The Saikis live in a run-down part of town, very different from the high-priced condo that Ryota and Midori call home. The free-spirited lifestyle of the Saiki family is nothing like the stiff and restricted lives that are led by Keita’s parents, which makes for quite the disastrous recipe – to an extent.

Just about the only thing these two families have in common is their struggle to decide whether to continue investing their lives in the child they have just discovered not to be their own, or to take back what biologically belongs to them and begin an entirely new life. In the span of a year, the film takes us through the conflict these two families go through as they navigate uncharted territory.

Ultimately deciding to reunite Keita and Ryuesi with their biological parents, both families spend the majority of the film attempting to make the transition easy, alternating between weekend sleepovers, play dates and get-togethers. Ryota goes as far as to tell Keita that it is a game in order to restore a sense of normalcy.

However, the decision becomes increasingly difficult for both parties rather than the smooth transition they had hoped for. Just a few months after the exchange, things appear to be settling down. On the surface, both the parents and children seem to have adapted to their new lives, but underneath the illusion lies an evident longing on the parents’ side for the old life they lived and the child they had spent six years raising as their own.

The ultimate realization of “Like Father, Like Son” is that both families are not able to continue with their new lives by letting go of the familiarity and comfort of their old ones. Koreeda tells the story of two families attempting to make sense out of an unconventional truth as he illustrates the significance of nature versus nurture – ultimately establishing that in a case like this, nurture wins.