The 2016 Japanese film After the Storm (海よりもまだ深く) will play at the Hollywood Theater in Dormont from June 16. A summary from a March San Francisco Chronicle review:
Ryoto (Hiroshi Abe) has lost his mojo. Fifteen years earlier, his novel won a prestigious award, but he has yet to follow up on that success. He is divorced from Kyoko (Yoko Maki) and is behind on his child support — he is limited by the divorce settlement to visiting his son Shingo (Taiyo Yoshizawa) once a month.Tickets and showtime information is not yet available. The theater is located at 1449 Potomac Ave. in Dormont (map), and is accessible by Pittsburgh's subway/LRT at a block south of Potomac Station.
He is also broke — probably because of the cost of the divorce and his gambling habit. With no follow-up novel in the works, he has taken a job with a private detective agency. As he gets the goods on his clients’ cheating significant others, he also examines his only life, which he is gradually realizing is a failure.
“I’m the ‘great talents bloom late’ kind,” Ryoto tells his mother, Yashiko (Kirin Kiki, who is excellent).
Not buying it for a second, Mom responds, “You’re taking too long to bloom.”
Unable to move on, Ryoto uses his private eye skills to spy on his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, who seems to be everything he is not — and a nice guy to boot. What could be a creepy sort of plot twist is, in Kore-eda’s hands, more of a sad desperation.
As with many of Kore-eda’s best films — “Maborosi” and “Still Walking,” among others — “After the Storm” has what the Japanese call mono no aware, which translates as “the pathos of things.” It is a film that is aware of the transient, impermanent nature of life.
