The hōmu dorama, or “home drama” — films that center on family life — has a long and distinguished pedigree in Japanese cinema. Yasujiro Ozu felt that his masterpieces about the dissolution of the family were home dramas and, as he was dying of cancer in 1963, told producer Shiro Kido that “it’s all home drama,” though lingering death, a genre staple, never figured in his films.
Neither does it in Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s “To Mom, With Love,” the feature version of a drama series made to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Home Drama Channel. Scripted by Maki Peyounne from her stage play, the film resembles a screwball comedy in its rapid-fire dialogue and comic bickering among its principals — three sisters who have come to a hot spring resort with their mom to celebrate her birthday.
In his first film since his acclaimed 2015 anthology “Three Stories of Love,” Hashiguchi goes beyond the jokey back-and-forth to unleash eruptions of real pain and anger from his stellar main cast. More of a crowd-pleaser than his best work, the film nonetheless cuts deep and true.