Asian World Film Festival Presents TRUE MOTHERS Film Review — A Tale of Two Mothers

Two people sit in a hotel room watching television. They are on a vacation to a hot spring after getting devastating news. They will not be able to have biological children and they just lost their one chance at treatment due to weather. They try to enjoy themselves on this vacation but are still reeling. The husband flips channels, trying to take their minds off it all. He turns to a show, one interviewing a couple who have just adopted a child. They are almost identical to them, down to the situation they find themselves in. The couple then shows their new happy life with the child they adopted. The husband and wife say nothing as they watch this show, transfixed at a life that could be theirs.

Directed by Noami Kawase, True Mothers is a look at the lives of two women and their parallel journeys of bringing a child into the world on the one hand, or raising them, on the other.

Satako is a woman who is happily married, with a stable life to boot. Due to fertility problems, she and her husband find they are unable to have a child. By chance they come across the potential for adopting a child and get in contact with an adoption agency. They are able to adopt one born of an accidental teen pregnancy.

Now years later, the mother of said child, Hikari, has contacted them.

Kawase Submission to the Asian World Film Festival Tells a Story About the Two Sides of Adoption

True Mothers uses its dual nature to tell two stories about the same journey. Framed by wide establishing shots of the city, Satako’s story is one of a woman who has gone the traditional path. She is married, has a good job, and a good apartment. She is at a point in her life where she is ready to have a child, only to find that she has no way to have one. She can get one through adoption.

Throughout True Mothers, we see Satako as a good mother. The opening shots of the movie show her singing to her son as he brushes his teeth. She then begins helping him with this daily chores, laughing as they do them together. Later on, when she is confronted by an incident at school, where her son is the alleged perpetrator, we see her go through the difficult process of figuring out if what her son is being accused of is true. We see her meeting with the school, talking to the mother of the victim, and considering whether or not her child is lying, so when a woman claiming to be her son’s birth mother comes into the picture, we have ample reason to think of Satako as the child’s mother.

Then, when we go into the other story…

Hikari is a child when her story starts, getting pregnant at 14. We quickly appreciate how young she is and how this is a time in her life when she should only be worrying about what high school she will be going to, but when she gets pregnant by what is supposed to be her first love, her life gets put on hold. She doesn’t want to give up the baby, but she is pressured into it with the promise that everything will be ok if she does. So for this to happen, she goes to Hiroshima and stays at a house for single pregnant mothers owned by an adoption agency.

As with the earlier shots in Satako’s story, there are wide establishing shots of either a comforting forest or the sea by the house in Hiroshima. These shots are framed in slow motion, to make it almost dreamlike and idyllic. These moments before and during the pregnancy are comforting ones.in contrast to the harsh and jarring scenes of her after her pregnancy. Her life doesn’t resume the normal she had known before. She becomes haunted by her experience, through social stigma from her family and community as well as mental trauma from giving up her baby. This leads to a dramatic turn in Hikari’s life where she has to make some difficult choices.

Asian World Film Festival Brings Two Stories Together in This Film

It’s how these two stories come together - and how it impacts their son - is the main story that True Mothers tells.

True Mothers is recommended for anyone who likes a slice-of-life movie that isn’t afraid to go into some dark subject matter.

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Run time: 2 hours 19 minutes

CAST:

Hiromi Nagasaku as Satoko Kurihara
Arata Iura as Kiyokazu Kurihara
Aju Makita as Hikari Katakura
Miyoko Asada as Shizue Asami
Rei Sato as Asato Kurihara

CREATIVE TEAM :

Director: Naomi Kawase
Producer: Yumiko Takebe
Screenwriter: Naomi Kawase, Izumi Takahashi, Mizuki Tsujimura
Cinematographer: Naomi Kawase, Naoki Sakakibara, Yûta Tsukinaga
Composers: Akira Kosemura, An Ton That

For more information, go to the Director Naomi Kawase website

Images courtesy of Asian World Film Festival