It's hardly news that drinking is a big part of life in Japan and that drunkenness is culturally tolerated. In Japanese movies the guy who passes out blotto in the genkan (entryway) of his apartment is typically framed as a sympathetic figure.
But what if the family patriarch returns home in this state night after night, decade after decade? In Kenji Katagiri's offbeat but hard-hitting "A Life Turned Upside Down: My Dad's an Alcoholic," a long-suffering wife and two daughters come to hate the drinking and, after years of abuse and neglect, the drinker.
Based on an autobiographical web comic by Mariko Kikuchi, the film may sound grim: "Leaving Las Vegas" in Japan. But Katagiri, whose one previous feature was 2018's "Room Laundering," begins it with warm pastel colors, perky accordion music and comically surreal images, like a TV family drama eager to please with off-kilter charm.
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