‘The Dry Spell’: Realistic drama tackles child poverty

Based on a 1990 novel by Mitsuru Kawabayashi, Masaya Takahashi’s offbeat drama “The Dry Spell” highlights a problem that has worsened in Japan over the decades: child poverty. According to a report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a little over 16% of Japanese children were living below the poverty line in 2017. In 1995, according to another study, that number was 12%.

So rather than being a period piece from the early Heisei Era (1989-2019), the film has a contemporary feel. But it also recalls a modern classic of Japanese cinema, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Nobody Knows” (2004), whose story of a mother abandoning her four children was inspired by a real-life incident from 1988.

One difference is the presence of adults who actually care about the dire situation of the kids — two sisters left home alone after their mom (Mugi Kadowaki) goes missing for weeks with her latest man. The children’s would-be allies, the glum Shunsaku Iwakiri (Toma Ikuta) and his chipper assistant Takuji Kida (Hayato Isomura), work for the water department in Maebashi, Gunma Prefecture, and the girls’ absent mother has not paid the water bill in months.

Though they give cute little Kumiko (the single-named Yuzuho) and her sharp-eyed older sister Keiko (Nanami Yamazaki) popsicles on a blazing hot summer day in the midst of a long drought, the two men have come to do their jobs: shut off the water, for who knows how long. However, they also help the girls, beginning with filling every pot and pan in their small rented house with water before turning off the tap.

This may make “The Dry Spell” sound like a simple heartwarming drama, but Takahashi, who has directed a smattering of films while working as an assistant director for everyone from the late Shinji Somai to comedy specialist Kankuro Kudo, realistically complicates this nice-guys-to-the-rescue narrative, though he doesn’t completely drain it of the standard-issue melodrama implicit in Shotaro Oikawa’s script.

Played with a slow-burn intensity by Ikuta, who is more often found in broad comic roles, Shunsaku is dedicated to his job while not really liking it, or his bachelor existence, for that matter. We learn that his wife works at her parents’ diner and lives alone with their young son. The reasons for this separation are never spelled out, but we see in flashbacks that Shunsaku, who grew up without love, has remained a loner even after his marriage. His soul is as dry as the sunbaked streets of Maebashi.

Meanwhile, the two girls, who fervently wish for a normal life with their mom, fill up pails from a faucet in a public park and amuse themselves by playing at a nearby river. Then Keiko takes to shoplifting so they can eat. Where, I started to wonder, are the water department guys?

They come, as they must, with Shunsaku unsettled by a thought his more idealistic colleague has planted in his head: Water, that necessity of life, should be as free as sunlight or air.

In contrast to Kore-eda’s masterpiece, which ends in tragedy, “The Dry Spell” goes for a splashy finale that feels overdone, like a firehose turned to full blast. But the kids stay likable and real, right down to their chapped lips. I just hope that Takahashi allowed them to hydrate between takes.