By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

UK release: 16 March 2024

This story of a pre-adolescent boy who may be being bullied at his Japanese school is told from 3 points of view – his mother’s, his teacher’s and his own.

• Read on for reasons including how this is a sensitive film about how individuality should be nurtured

What writer Yūji Sakamoto and director Hirokazu Kore-eda achieve is a story where we’re never quite sure what the whole truth is and therefore it’s a tale told and re-told but revealing many surprising layers along the way.

Sakura Andô plays widowed mother Saori (Sakura Andô) who is concerned about the welfare of her preteen son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) who asks if the brain of a pig was transplanted into a human, what would the resulting creature be, human or pig? Or some kind of monster? 

Saori confronts teacher Michitoshi Hori, played by Eita Nagayama convincing in a difficult role, at his provincial Japanese elementary school, and is met with meaningless apologies from a cold headteacher played memorably by Yūko Tanaka.

We rewind and learn of the difficulties the teacher faces as he wonders whether Minato is bullying fellow pupil and outsider Yori, a believable Hinata Hiiragi.

It is only in the final act when the story is told from the boys’ point of view that we discover their friendship and how it is threatened by Yori’s drunken father who suspects something’s not quite right with his senstive son and is ready to bully it out of him.

What we particularly enjoyed here is the exploration of the notion of a monster. Is it the parent bullying a child? The teacher picking on their pupils? Or the parent having unrealistic expectations of their child’s teachers? Or what the child is frightened of becoming?

Ageing the youngsters as pre-adolescents neatly sidesteps the thorny issue of sex and instead focusses on the unlikely friendship between 2 misfits seeking to find their way in a world they don’t quite understand.

Monster has an ambiguous ending which we won’t spoil but it does leave it as a story open to much interpretation.

Despite its subtitling it’s 1 of the most interesting and engaging films we’ve seen in a while, realised with a true sensitivity about individuality and how it should be nurtured rather than starved.

• Main picture by Suenaga Makoto via Facebook courtesy Monster
• Have you seen a Japanese film before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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