How much will they miss you when you're gone? Directors typically keep putting off the answer to that question as long as possible, working until they drop. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose 2008 dysfunctional family drama "Tokyo Sonata" won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, got his answer with his latest work to win a major festival invitation and his first in four years.
This is not a film but a five-part drama series Kurosawa made for the Wowow entertainment channel. Broadcast in Japan from January to February this year, "Shokuzai (Penance)" will screen out of competition at the upcoming Venice Film Festival. Since festivals such as Venice ignore TV dramas as a rule, the exception made for Kurosawa is a measure of his high international reputation. That is, he's been missed very much indeed.
Based on a novel of the same title by Kanae Minato, "Shokuzai (Penance)" will not dent that reputation, despite its TV-quality production values and a whodunit story line that, stripped down, wouldn't be out of place in a weekly network "Misuteri Gekijo" ("Mystery Theater") program.