Film review: I Wish

The film’s greatest pleasure, next to its central performances, is its consistently calm, almost sombre tone, says Hugh Lilly.

By Hugh Lilly In Film

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18th August, 2012

Film review

The gentle, perceptive films of Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda often focus on children and their response (or amusing indifference) to the actions of the adults around them. Kore-eda’s films are consistently sympathetic to their characters’ sometimes trivial-seeming worries and difficulties, even when they’re primarily about adults – as was his unfairly maligned 2009 magical-realist fantasy Air Doll, about a blow-up sex-doll come to life, and the man who loves her. In his new film, I Wish, fresh out of the New Zealand International Film Festival, Kore-eda returns ...

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