The most common description for Nishikawa Miwa's feature debut is "a dark comedy". It is obvious that a lot of darkness is there, as it shows a total collapse of one dysfunctional middle-class family, but calling it a comedy
this could be further discussed. It is not funny to discover that almost all family members lie every day to each other, they cheat, hide things and keep their secrets under the simulated calm surface. The already explored topic of a father who had lost his job but still pretends that everything is like it used to be is widened with an enormous amount of debt he produced. The debt is publicly announced at the grandpa's funeral, in front of all friends, family members and daughter's boyfriend. This causes not only a downfall of a family, but also a failure of a relationship between daughter Tomoko, the only decent and ethical person in this crew, and her boyfriend. This occasion also brings sudden come-back into the family of Suji, the disinherited son and a major fraud, who ironically comes as a family saver. Actually, the things went so deep and so wrong that there is nothing that could save this family from failure. The most impressive move of a young director is an excellent occasional use of a slow motion combined with broken sounds. Nishikawa Miwa uses it to emphasize the moments of emotional tense and gets very good effects. Besides this, the soundtrack is great. It is composed by Masaru Nakamura and performed by the Cauliflowers.
Review of Wild Berries
