The usual sensory cinema of the Japanese Naomi Kawase was never as carnal as in
True Mothers,
her latest film.
And yet the director does not stop delving into some of the great themes of her career with a work that is unmistakably hers, although much more earthly.
A story in which the inevitable bond between the two mothers of a child given up for adoption takes on overtones that go beyond the legal, the psychological and the testimonial, to end up reaching a state of spiritual cut.
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Kawase, also a co-writer, establishes a structure that is both iron and attractive with continuous leaps in space and time that also act as an emotional spur, almost in the manner of an intrigue story, although not at all.
Because what is essential in
True Mothers
is the superb portrait of the inner state of the characters, and not only of the parents, the physical and finally legal, but also of the adoptive father and a series of women who swarm through the lives of both females. and, in their own way, they also establish a maternal bond in many ways.
In principle, far from
The Forest of Mourning
(2007) and
Quiet Waters
(2014), perhaps Kawase's best films, since they approached his family-style stories from a mystical perspective and his new work does so in some passages in an almost documentary —as in the parents' meetings in the adoption
agency—, True Mothers,
however, ends up connecting with its usual enveloping style through musical interludes and its always mysterious metaphors. The elements of nature and home merge, to the sound of some
new age
piano notes
and of a thunderous light of white tones very in accordance with the message of the story, in the calm face of a mature mother out of devotion that deserves happiness, and the nervous face of a teenage mother out of obligation.
REAL MOTHERS
Director: Naomi Kawase.
Performers: Hiromi Nagasaku, Arata Iura, Aju Makita, Miyoko Asada.
Genre: drama.
Japan, 2020.
Duration: 139 minutes.