Movie Review: True Mothers

I watched this movie last week along with another film called Honeyland, and I am glad my mom recommended it to me because it truly was an excellent movie. The first time I saw it before watching it a second time, I was extremely tired due to a lack of sleep and nodded off before I could get to the really good part of the movie, and so I ended up not finishing it. But then I decided to watch it again in full. And damn, it blew me away.

At the beginning of the movie, we hear a woman moaning in pain as she gives birth and the sound of her newborn baby coming out of her womb. We hear this as we look at a shot of the sea. Then we see Asato, a six year old boy, and his mother, Satako, helping him get ready for school. Later on in the day, Satako receives a phone call from the school because Asato allegedly pushed Sora, his classmate, off the jungle gym. Satako called Sora’s mom to figure out if what went down was true, but then Sora’s mom demands not just an apology, but that Satako pay for Sora’s injury expenses. When Satako tries to explain she can’t do that, Sora’s mom digs at her for not wanting to pay the expenses for the injury even though she lives a comfortable middle-class life, so she must have the money and is just stingy. When they are out and about, Satako and Asato run into Sora and his mom and his mom ignores Satako’s greeting.

Satako then flashes back to an earlier conversation she had with her husband, Kiyokazu, about conceiving a child. They try to have a baby but then go to the doctor only to find out that Kiyokazu has no sperm in his semen. He ends up having to go get a surgery to get the semen extracted from his testicles because of a possibly blocked ejaculatory duct. The couple concludes that Satako’s chance of conceiving is most likely nil and he says that the only other option would be to divorce her. Kiyokazu is later seen with his friend getting drunk at a bar; they talk about kids and married life, and his friend tells him about his life with two kids. Kiyokazu, intoxicated, tells his friend that he has to go to Sapporo to conceive and has to get an ICSI sperm injection because his sperm is zero count. He then asks what is sex, and explains that it’s a “miracle.” We then see Satako and Kiyokazu at an airport, and they find out that due to inclement weather their flight to Sapporo to have the sperm injection has been cancelled. Satako and Kiyokazu grieve over their struggles to conceive a child, but later on while watching television at home they see an ad where couples talk about the difficulty of conceiving a baby, and then we see testimonies by pregnant women about not being able to take care of their children and giving them up for adoption. One woman says the guy who got her pregnant was already married to another woman, and another lost her child to a stillbirth. The ad is run by an adoption agency called Baby Baton, where children find their parents and “ill-equipped mothers” give their kids to couples who are unable to conceive but still want kids. Kiyokazu is unsure about going to Baby Baton, but Satako is curious about it so they go to a parents night meeting to learn more about the agency. They meet the founder of the agency, Asami, and Asami goes over the rules about adoption. The first rule is for the adoptive parents to be truthful with the kids and tell them about their birth parents for the sake of the child’s safety and wellness. Other rules are that the couple has to be married for more than three years, and that there needs to be one stay-at-home parent so either the husband or the wife needs to quit their job so they can stay with the child at home. Another rule is that adoptive parents can choose the name of their child but not the gender, so they have to submit both male and female names since the agency chooses whether each couple gets to adopt a boy or a girl. After hearing a testimony from a family who adopted a child through Baby Baton, Kiyokazu changes his mind after thinking about it and the couple decides to adopt a baby from Baby Baton. Satako and Kiyokazu meet with the biological mother of the child they’re going to adopt; she is a high school student named Hikari Katakura and it is an emotional decision for her to give up her child. However, we won’t learn more about her until later in the film. We then flash forward to Asato saying sorry for pushing Sora. Satako gets a call from Asato’s teacher, Ms. Yokota, and reveals that Sora told Asato he lied about being pushed off the jungle gym, so now they can play with each other again. This is joyful news, but then Hikari calls Satako and demands to get Asato back. She shows up at the house and demands for Satako and Kiyokazu to give her child back to her, but then Kiyokazu accuses her of intruding their house and of blackmailing them.

The movie then gives perspective on the events in Hikari’s life leading up to her meeting with the couple. When she was in the eighth grade Hikari developed a crush on a guy in her gym class named Takumi, and one day she goes to his place and they start dating and having sex. Hikari’s mom meets with the doctor at the school and he tells her Hikari is 23 weeks pregnant and that it would be too late to have an abortion. Hikari’s mother cries in disbelief at her daughter’s pregnancy. Takumi meets with Hikari and cries tears of guilt and apologizes to her for her unwanted pregnancy. Hikari’s parents tell her to quit school and give her child up for adoption when it’s born, and that she still has time to study to get into her sister’s high school. Hikari meets with Asami, the founder of Baby Baton, and travels to Hiroshima with her to stay at the agency. It’s at the agency that Hikari meets other young pregnant women, such as Konomi and Maho. According to Asami, many young women arrive at Baby Baton on their own because of strained relationships with their parents. After befriending the girls at the agency, Konomi and Maho leave when they give birth to their children, and then soon after Hikari gives birth to her son, Asato.

The movie flashes forward to when Hikari demands money from Satako since she won’t give her her child back. The police from Kanagawa district arrive at the couple’s home and Detective Mishima shows the photo of Hikari, who has disappeared. The film flashes back to when Hikari is with her family at dinner and everyone else is talking about how great their lives are and Hikari feels left out. When one of the family members makes a snide comment about Hikari’s pregnancy and Hikari calls him out on it, her mom strikes her and kicks her out of the house. She revisits Asami and asks for work because she cannot live at home anymore. Asami then tells her that Baby Baton is closing down so she won’t be able to stay that long. She meets the last mom that Baby Baton will take, named Sara, and Hikari and Sara have a conversation about pregnancy. Sara asks Hikari about her baby and her relationship with it because she doesn’t feel love for her own unborn baby. When Sara leaves to give birth to her baby, Hikari finds a box of records of adoptive parents from March 2013 and finds out about her biological child’s adoptive parents. When Asami is closing up Baby Baton, Hikari asks her why she started Baby Baton, and Asami explains that thought about having a baby herself, but couldn’t, and taking care of the young mothers was in her way taking care of children. Hikari thanks her for everything and travels by sea to find the adoptive parents of her child and get him back. She gets a newspaper delivery job in Yokohama and meets a girl named Tomoka, who wears a yellow jacket and gives Hikari a makeover. They bond as friends but then two men come over and assault Tomoka for not paying the rent on time for her and Hikari’s apartment. Tomoka leaves the apartment and her yellow back behind, and Hikari falls into a depression. When her boss tells her to get help for her depression, Hikari decides to go over to the couple’s house and retrieve her child, especially since she gave all her money to the guys who hounded Tomoka over the rent.

Then we see Hikari at Satoko and Kiyokazu’s house and they still do not trust that she is the biological mother of Asato, no matter how much she is telling the truth, because she looks unrecognizable from the Hikari that they met many years ago when she first gave up Asato for adoption. Hikari cries and begs for forgiveness, saying she is not fit to be Asato’s mother. It’s shown that Satoko told Asato he has a biological mom and that two years ago Hikari wrote her son a letter, and in the letter she writes “please don’t erase me.” Satoko then realizes that she was wrong to not recognize Hikari as the missing woman that the detective showed her, and seeks out to find Hikari to apologize. She takes Asato with her to see his biological mom, and she finds Hikari standing and looking out at the ocean outside. She apologizes for not recognizing Hikari and Hikari is finally reunited with her son, Asato.

This film honestly blew me away. There is also a special feature on the DVD of the movie where French actress Juliette Binoche has a Zoom discussion with the director of True Mothers, Naomi Kawase. She discusses the process that went into making the film, and her inspiration for it. Kawase says that for the scene where Hikari meets the women of the Baby Baton agency she wanted to incorporate real women who had to give up their children for adoption because these women exist in the shadows of Japanese society, and she wanted to raise awareness of what they went through. During the filming she spent a lot of time with the crew and took Juliette and the crew to different Shinto Buddhist temples in six locations throughout Japan during the production of the movie to offer blessings to the temples. For her, Kawase’s goal in making this film was to take difficult topics and create some kind of positive value from them; I agree, because as a Buddhist myself I believe in this philosophy of value creation, where we confront daily challenges and social issues and transform them based on the view that everything has meaning and you can create value out of anything negative. We call that changing poison into medicine.

Here is the trailer for True Mothers: