Do Japanese directors experience that Spielbergian thirst for critical acclaim as they mature in their careers? Kiyoshi Kurosawa is probably best known in America for directing the original Pulse, and he's pretty much stuck to horror films over the course of his career. Tokyo Sonata, his latest effort, feels as though Kurosawa has set aside scary movies to decorate his mantel with an award or two—only instead of Schindler's List, he's produced the Japanese American Beauty.

Meet the Sasakis: Ryuhei (Teruyuki Kagawa), a downsized salaryman, spends his unemployed days wandering aimlessly around Tokyo, a ghost dressed in a suit and tie (he can't bring himself to tell his family that he's got no job). His wife, Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi), chafes at the constraints of a housewifely existence in a home with older children. One son, Takashi, has signed up for the U.S. Army to fight in Iraq. The other son, Kenji, wants to play piano all the time. The movie progresses at a pleasant clip, as each member of the family falls apart in his or her own way. Ryuhei applies for unemployment and faces humiliation with very little grace; Kenji diverts his lunch money into secret piano lessons and spends all his time up in his room, silently playing piano on a broken keyboard he salvaged from the trash. Kurosawa brings his beautiful cinematography and note-perfect horror-film pacing to Tokyo Sonata, and each story is incredibly engrossing until things reach their climax.

Of course every member of the family has a melodramatic breakdown at exactly the same time, in over-the-top scenarios that unintentionally mock the careful construction of the film up to that point. In particular, one scene where Ryuhei staggers down a street and literally can't go three steps without collapsing into a pile of trash—he falls into four separate piles before finally writhing around, dramatically, in the garbage for a while—resembles an outtake from a Naked Gun film intended to parody this kind of scene. After all the freak-outs are done, though, the film settles back into its quiet desperation quite nicely, and it builds to a sublime emotional climax. Rarely does a derailed movie so completely and assuredly get back on track and repair itself.