Nobody Knows

Kore-Eda likes to make films about things that happen beyond our perception. No messages from the great beyond (After Life) this time, but from behind the door of an anonymous apartment. Kore-Eda has been walking round with the story of Nobody Knows since 1988, when the ‘affair of the four deserted children of Nishi-Sugamo’ found its way into Japanese newspapers. In a loose, handheld style, he first convincingly sketches the internal logic of the everyday life of a one-parent family that hides away from the world. The landlord and neighbours of the new apartment mustn’t find out that so many children live there; so they are smuggled in by mother Keiko and her son Akira (aged 12), who is the only one allowed outside. After a while, the mother stays away increasingly often and eventually disappears entirely. (A new lover? Pathologically irresponsible? Kore-Eda does not pay much attention to this aspect.) She leaves the children in the care of Akira. He dedicates himself with love and without complaining to his task which is doomed to failure. Kore-Eda does not just prove his talent in directing the actors (Yagira Yuya as Akira won a Golden Palm) and in the moving portrayal of the world of children. He made a film that moves without being sentimental, that is shocking without shocking, that isn’t coarse but is realistic. He takes his time and only explains the absolutely necessary, like a true master. (GT)