When the Saikis take reasonable offence at the suggestion and agree instead to a gradual exchange of the children over weekends, Ryota begins to understand just how little he knows about being a husband and father: With Keita's departure and the boy Ryusei's (Shogen Hwang) arrival, Ryota realizes he's exchanged one unknown child for another. Naturally then, he sees the solution to the situation as a matter of business, and offers to raise both children in the form of a bid. Rarely ever at home with his neglected wife Midori (Machiko Ono) and dourly formal – when not obviously disappointed – with their only boy Keita (Keita Ninomiya), it's typical of Ryota that learning his real child has been raised by a lower-class couple, the Saikis (Yoko Maki and Riri Furanki), seems more offensive to his social than parental status. In particular, he's drawn to Ryota Nonomiya (played by the Japanese recording star Masaharu Fukuyama), a career-fixated junior executive for whom the news that his son isn't really his compels a critical confrontation with his own considerable shortcomings as a parent.

Because he's such a precise observer of family micro-dynamics and sublime director of children, Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda ( After Life, Nobody Knows) gets away with much in Like Father, Like Son, a credibility-challenging story about two Tokyo couples dealing with the revelation that their six-year-old sons were switched at birth.Īlthough allegedly based on a true incident, Koreeda's story seems less interested in the nuances of any actual case than the implications for self-reckoning the circumstances might present.

Movie like father like son