Tokyo Sonata

Turbulent times in Tokyo, and on the outskirts of the city, dole queues stretch round the block, buildings fall into disrepair and families fall apart.

For Teruyuki Kagawa, recently sacked from his management job, this means pretending to his wife and children that he is still employed - eating sandwiches by the underpass, hopelessly chewing the fat with his fellow job-seekers.

Back at home, his family have their own secrets. One son uses his lunch money to pay for piano lessons, another dreams of fighting with the American army in Iraq, and his wife develops Stockholm syndrome with a burglar.

Underneath it all simmers a violence, the sense that something is about to erupt, be it the city or the Iraq war or indeed Kagawa himself.

It makes for a taut, emotionally exacting film, writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa expertly unspooling his tale inch by inch.