Suwa Nobuhiro is, alongside Kore-eda Hirokazu, the most distinctive and innovative talent in the new generation of Japanese independents. His films are totally collaborative (he works intensively with the actors, developing dialogue and performance through improvisation, and gives only minimal direction to the crew) and yet unmistakably his; their defining characteristics are intelligence and
a refusal to wallow in emotional empathy with the characters.

M/OTHER centers on a seemingly stable relationship at the moment when it starts to come apart. Tetsuro, owner of a chain of elegant, loss-making restaurants, is recently divorced; his ex-wife has custody of their eight-year-old son, Shun. Tetsuro now cohabits with a younger woman, Aki, a graphic designer. When Shun comes to stay for several weeks (his mother is in hospital with a broken leg), Aki finds herself cast as his surrogate-mother--
or is it that she unconsciously casts herself in the role, to measure herself against the absent ex-wife?

Slowly and painstakingly, Suwa and his actors reveal the full psychological complexity that underpins an increasingly fraught and fractious situation. The insistence on objectivity yields rewards no melodrama can touch.