Sion Sono is Japan's edgy indie director par excellence, whose internationally acclaimed films expose social ills and challenge taboos in a variety of genres and moods, from the death-trip chills of "Jisatsu Circle" ("Suicide Club," 2001) to the black-comic laughs of "Ai no Mukidashi" ("Love Exposure," 2008).
He's the last director on Earth, in other words, one would expect to make a sob fest, but the story of his latest film, "Chanto Tsutaeru" ("Be Sure to Share"), follows the weeper genre template: An irascible high school soccer coach (Eiji Okuda) falls terminally ill with stomach cancer before he can repair his relationship with his adult son Shiro (Akira), whom he bullied as a boy in the name of suparuta kyoiku (spartan education).
A bluff, cheery editor at the local city magazine, Shiro doesn't hate his dad for giving him a hard time on the soccer field and at home — he knows the old man's heart was in the right place. At the same time, he regrets never having had a real conversation with him, so he makes a point of visiting him in the hospital for an hour every day.