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.