After plumbing the depths of hokum with 2018 eco-fable “Vision,” Naomi Kawase has returned to sturdier ground. “True Mothers” was originally scheduled to premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and it’s the director’s most satisfying movie in a good while, as well as one of her most conventional.
Adapted from a lengthy 2015 novel by Mizuki Tsujimura, it’s a story of two halves, the first belonging to an affluent middle-aged couple living in Tokyo, and the second to the teenage mother whose child they adopt.
Satoko Kurihara (Hiromi Nagasaku) and husband Kiyokazu (Arata Iura) decide rather late in life that they’d like to start a family, only to discover that he is infertile. When they start to consider adoption, they’re led to a non-profit organization that matches them with a birth mother, Hikari Katakura (Aju Makita), who’s still in junior high school.