Title: Soshite, baton wa watasareta / そして、バトンは渡された
Rating: 7 /10
Recommended for:
Those who like heart-warming stories about atypical families and the different forms which love can come in
* Disclaimer: I have the novel which is still lying around in my to-be-read stack but my opinion here is based on the movie alone with no prior knowledge of the story.
Liked:
- While I think that viewers may not enjoy the story as much if they had read the novel especially since the developments were mostly standard and predictable, the fact that I hadn't read it probably helped me to enjoy the twist and revelation better towards the end. To be honest, as much as two-thirds of the movie was a tad confusing and the flow of the story kept getting disrupted because the timeline repeatedly went back and forth between the childhood version of Yuko i.e. Miitan and the senior high school version in the current day. However, things improved by the final part of the movie so if you can hold out till then, the ending should at least be satisfying enough to address why certain things happened and why people did what they did.
- While the developments were hardly surprising, the central theme of what it means to be family despite the lack of blood relations and how love can come in different forms was presented in an engaging and thoughtful manner but not to the extent of a full-blown tearjerker. To be honest, Yuko had really great luck in that the fathers she had were all good men who truly loved her as a daughter in their own ways. Or perhaps not because this was a conscious choice by Rika after all. If it turned out that any of these guys were bad, Yuko's life would have turned out a lot more differently. While Rika's life choices may seem to have been selfish on the surface, I think that the revelation into her true thoughts and reasons for her actions helped to redeem her, albeit it was too late.
- The acting of Nagano Mei, Ishihara Satomi and Tanaka Kei turned out to be better than expected. Since the story wasn't going to offer much surprises, I wasn't hopeful that they had much room to develop their roles or stand out but they proved me wrong. Especially if you are a Ishihara fan, I think you would enjoy seeing how gorgeous she looked in this movie (most of the time). The funny thing though was, these three hardly had any or in fact any scenes together. In fact, as Ishihara's character Rika was MIA for multiple periods of time, I don't even recall her having a scene with Nagano after Miitan grew up to be Yuko.
Disliked:
- While the final revelation did bring some belated justice for Rika who had been portrayed as a not-so-good mother, the realistic side in my mind kept questioning the likelihood of this happening in real life. It's like, you get the logic of why she did what she did but whether you were convinced by her rationale was another thing altogether. Likewise, for her subsequent husbands to be so welcoming of her stepdaughter to this extent, it did create some doubt as to why they did that even though they knew the real reason why Rika chose them as her husbands. Perhaps it's my doubtful nature to question the whys rather than accepting the "good things in life" as they are but these nagging thoughts made me feel that this movie was more of a fairy tale rather than a realistic take on the unconventional family structures in the modern era.
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