Aruitemo Aruitemo (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2008)

In Still Walking a family gathers, as they do every year, to remember the drowned eldest son in a nervy family drama that owes more than just the set-up to Ozu. Koreeda would probably not deny the influence: the structural elements are the same as in Tokyo Story in particular, with the grown-up children paying lip service to the obligatory visit to their elderly parents, with backbiting over past events just simmering under the surface while the matriarch settles on trying to stifle the discord with a mountain of food. Meanwhile, precocious grandchildren run around making impertinent observations. And the outsider, i.e. the daughter-in-law, is again the only one spared overt parental censure.
Where Koreeda does diverge from the Ozu template is in the bitterness that unexpectedly rears its head, and it's there that the story momentarily walks on its own legs, even if it then finds it has nowhere else to go. Still, it's sensitively observed and manages to sidestep both melodrama and schmaltz, and so at least works as a slice of real life.

6/10