Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), a private detective, struggles to make ends meet while dealing with a gambling addiction. His passion is for writing, but it's been over a decade since he published his last award-winning novel. Shingo (Taiyo Yoshizawa), his young son, lives with Ryota's ex-wife, Kyoko (Yoko Maki), who tell Ryota that she won't let him see Shingo if he can't pay his required child support payment in full by 5 PM that day. A typhoon causes all three of them to stay the night at the apartment of Ryota's mother, Yoshiko (Kirin Kiki), who want Kyoko and Ryota to end up back together.

      After the Storm, at its core, is about a dysfunctional family trying to regain functionality while coming to terms with their human flaws. The screenplay by writer/director Hirokazu Koreeda brings each character to life in a way that makes you forget that you're watching a narrative film; it feels more like a documentary because everything seems so true-to-life. Just like with Still Walking and Like Father, Like Son, he prefers nuance and understatement over melodrama. Everything is gentle here----even the performances and the comic relief. Kudos to Koreeda for trusting the audience's patience, intelligence and emotions like he always does.

      You can watch After the Storm while judging the character of Ryota or by just experiencing what he goes through without judging him and still be emotionally engrossed by the film either way. Ryota seems like he's far from a perfect husband, but he's not a bad person, so don't be so quick to judge him. Just like any sane human being, he wants to be a better husband, parent and person which are tasks that are easier said than done. Ryoko's mother looks at the optimistic side by believing that Kyoko should have given Ryota more chances before divorcing him. She might seem initially naive, that's what she was led to believe based on how she herself was raised as a child, so it would make sense that she would look at the bright side.

      Koreeda grasps that the more specific a story is, the more universal it becomes. Every detail plays its part in the film---i.e., the exact kind of snack that Ryota remembers eating while taking shelter from a typhoon during his childhood. The typhoon that takes place could be seen as a spectacle, but the film's true spectacle is actually lies beneath the humanism: the innate struggles (a different kind of storm) of everyone to try their best to maximize their happiness and tranquility. Concurrently, the typhoon can be seen as a metaphor that symbolizes the family's emotional turmoil. As you can probably observe by now, After the Storm feels as rich and complex as a novel is with its fully-drawn characters and relationships that are relatable. Each character changes in a way by the end of the film, but their character arcs feels authentic, unlike the contrived arc of Wilson in the upcoming dysfunctional family drama Wilson. At a running time of 117 minutes, which feels more like 90 minutes, After the Storm is warm, wise, nuanced and profoundly moving. It would make for an interesting double feature with Ordinary People, The 400 Blows, and Tokyo Sonata.