THE FAMILY GAME Movie Review

Kazoku Gaimu
Kazoku Game

The director of this bitter 1983 Japanese satire, Yoshimitsu Morita, is probably not a psychic, but he could certainly pass for one based on this cautionary tale about a manic, over-achieving Japan, Inc. on the verge of collapsing under its own unbearable weight. The parents portrayed in The Family Game are frantic about the upcoming exams that will decide the academic fate of their younger son, Shigeyuki (Ichirota Miyagawa). With dad (played by Juzo Itami, the late director of Tampopo) constantly at work and mom (Saori Yuki) continually cleaning, a tutor named Yoshimoto (Yusaku Matsuda) is brought into the family's tiny home to assure that Shigeyuki will be admitted to the most prestigious high school possible. The tutor, however, is a little wackier than the family bargained for, and his impact on Shigeyuki and the entire family structure is like a delicate pinprick on the surface of a huge, vastly over-inflated, thin-skinned balloon. The Family Game looks like an episode of Leave it to Beaver that was directed by Luis Buñuel; it's subversive, funny, and always on the verge of shocking. In the end, the The Family Game's bleak, unblinking honesty—despite all its comic, surrealist flourishes—becomes downright sobering.

NEXT STOP … The Crazy Family, Léοlο, Welcome to the Dollhouse

1983 107m/C JP Junichi Tsujita, Yusaku Matsuda, Juzo Itami, Saori Yuki, Ichirota Miyagawa; D: Yoshimitsu Morita; W: Yoshimitsu Morita; C: Yonezo Maeda. VHS FCT