Hirokazu Kore-eda brings his usual warmth and generosity of spirit to the seemingly cold presence of GenAI in our lives Sheep in the box (Haku no Naka no Hitsugi), in which grieving parents hope to ease their pain by embracing a human built in the image of their dead son. The Japanese director has no shortage of ideas, the most important of which is the possibility of using advanced robotics to provide closure to the bereaved. But too few of these ideas yield satisfactory results, resulting in drama that becomes disingenuous and insubstantial, reaching a depth that remains elusive.
Family dynamics have often been at the heart of Kore-eda’s films, which are always distinguished by his exceptional direction of children. A key element of his work is children’s resilience and resourcefulness, which continues here with the robot that outgrows the need for its adoptive parents, just as flesh-and-blood children do when it’s time to seek independence. But these and other themes lack definition and emotional heft, making the film feel flimsy, especially given its two-hour-plus running time.
Sheep in the box
Bottom line Beautifully made but thematically mystical.
place: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
He slanders: Haruka Ayase, Daigo, Reimu Kawaki
Director and screenwriter: Hirokazu Kore-eda
2 hours and 6 minutes
Despite occasional detours into fantasy like the fantastic 1998 After lifeKore-eda is essentially a naturalistic filmmaker with a remarkably humane character who has often been stigmatized as a descendant of Ozu. Which makes the possibility of him tackling a sci-fi scenario in the near future interesting. The hilariously futuristic touches of the opening scenes – a delivery drone that can transform into a small UFO carrying packages high above the city coast; A robotic crossing guard followed by a series of children – holding the promise of light-hearted humour.
The drone lands at the address of architect Oton Komoto (Haruka Ayase), who designed her family’s modernist home, an arrangement of nested boxes stacked around a garden courtyard. It was built by her carpentry and construction merchant husband Kensuke (Japanese TV comedian Daigo). When the camera pans to a framed photo of their 7-year-old son, Kakeru (Rimu Kuwaki), composer Yuta Bandoh’s melancholy music provides a not-so-subtle hint that the boy is no longer with them.
One of the packages delivered contained a heart-shaped package that opened to release a 3D image of a Luna moth, the logo of a company called REbirth which specializes in human replicas of deceased loved ones. It turns out that a representative had first contacted the Comoto family two years ago at their son’s funeral and they qualified for a free promotional trial.
Oton is somewhat curious, given how keenly she feels Kakeru’s absence, but Kensuke is more skeptical. They make an appointment at the REbirth offices and hear sales pitches but remain unsure until a young boy, the age their son was when he died, approaches them in the cafeteria. Amazed by how realistic the robot baby is, they sign up for the program, sending photos, videos and other information about Kakeru to input into his design.
When the new model Kakeru is delivered, Oton is overjoyed, even if the boy’s communication skills are basic, initially limited to “Mama, I’m home.” But it’s hard to convince Papa, as the newcomer refuses to crack up on his Tamagotchis and Rompas before heading out to play baseball for the day.
Most directors look for conflict in the inevitable mismatches between grieving parents with human feelings and a human being with no feelings and no needs beyond his or her nocturnal charging station. But Kore-eda drags its way through it all without finding much dramatic nuance, making the middle part dull.
Things come back to life briefly when Otton’s wise mother shows up uninvited, faints at the sight of her dead grandson and then mocks the folly of replacing the boy with a machine, reminding Otton that she is still young enough to have another child. But even this fails to generate tangible drama, as do persistent tensions over the true circumstances of Kakeru’s death.
Most interesting is the appearance of a young man dressed in black, followed by a handful of other children with whom Kakeru finds a kinship as they spend time every day in an abandoned warehouse making mysterious plans.
While Kore-eda’s treatment of the existential threat of artificial intelligence is refreshingly free of violence, rebellion, and doom, it is also a bit predictable in its conclusion that humans’ accelerated learning abilities will soon render their human families unnecessary. The writer-director shows his hand by having Kakeru collect pieces from Otone’s architectural models and begin building his own model in secret.
The film’s most original idea is the instinctive connection between robots and aspects of nature such as tree networks nourished and protected by a “Mother Tree” that acts as a central computer hub. There are certainly dystopian shades in the inference that robots will form their own societies, leaving people behind. But Kore-eda is more interested in the smilingly happy outcome of mutual agreement, which is pushed to emotional exaggeration by the increasing confusion of Bandoh’s score.
Photography was done by Ryuto Kondo, who also served as cinematographer on Kore-eda’s remarkable Palme d’Or-winning film Thieves And the latest A monsterThe film looks sharp, with plenty of stunning aerial shots and great natural light in many of the outdoor scenes. It’s also well acted, particularly by Ayase, the hero of Kore-eda Our little sisterwhose gentle disposition and unforced sweetness are a perfect match for the director’s sensibility.
but Sheep in the box (Title comes from The little princeanother idea) is undoubtedly a minor entry in the Cor Edda canon. If you want to see a stimulating meditation on human-human interaction that’s truly moving, look no further than the criminally underrated Kogonada. After Yangfrom 2021.
