http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3756788/

Hirokazu Kore-eda's latest, released for a short run this week I think just in Curzon cinemas. I love pretty much everything I've seen of his, a couple of them have been varying degrees of devastating (either tragic as in Nobody Knows or suffused with sadness like Air Doll and Maborosi) but this continued his more recent run of gently observed family stories. Even more so than, say, Still Walking, this is a really sweet natured film. It struck me as I was heading home that it had been a long time since I purposely set out to watch a film that was so positive in its outlook, despite the subject matter being ripe for melodrama. Three adult sisters, whose father left them years ago to take up with another woman and whose mother left them to fend for themselves when she couldn't cope with the rejection, impulsively invite their much younger half-sister who they meet at their dad's funeral to live with them in their slightly shambolic old house.
Everything unfolds at a leisurely pace, though, and any bitterness or recriminations feel completely authentic. And despite that, it's one of those films where you're just happy to spend time with the characters. The film is indulgent of them and the bond between the sisters is far more the focus than the familial tensions. It's really nice, has uniformly good performances, plus it is wonderfully shot in some lovely scenic locations and has a great big almost-but-not-quite saccharine score by Yoko Kanno. It's proper comfort viewing.