There are directors who seem quite comfortable with shifting gears with each film. Howard Hawks is a classic example of this, while contemporary equivalents would be folks like Jonathan Demme or Michael Winterbotham.
And then there are the directors who have found a niche, whether it be quiet comedies (Mike Leigh) or cinema verité (Abbas Kiarostami).
It can be quite exciting when a director moves beyond their niche into something different. David Cronenberg is an example of someone who has moved from horror films to drama with great success.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a Japanese director. He cut his teeth on a series of atmsopheric horror films ("Cure" and "Pulse" are two particularly good examples of his work). I've been following his work since TIFF did a spotlight on him several years ago,
With "Tokyo Sonata", he moves to a Japanese version of a kitchen-sink drama. A salariman in modern Japan is let go when his company outsources his job to Dalian, China. Unable to tell his wife and two young sons about his change in fortune, he maintains an elaborate facade to hide the truth.
This indirectly sets in motion a series of acts which threaten to take the family apart.
The film succeeds in showing a vision of Japan quite different from its usual depiction in film. Kurowsawa gets good performances from his cast. The only criticism I'd have is that there is a section about 3/4 of the way in where several things happen which shift the film abruptly, but which didn't make sense to me dramatically.
Overall, it was a good film but not nearly as powerful as some of his previous films.
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