Daisuke (Yusaku Matsuda), the 30-ish younger son of a rich and powerful businessman, has broken away from his family to the extent that he lives in his own modest house, though the bills for it and for his servants are paid by the older brother who runs the family business.
Daisuke is a dedicated romantic. He reads. He responds to beauty. He looks down on trade and the new world of capitalism. With the arrogance of the very rich, he tells Hiraoka, a desperate, penniless, former classmate, that a career in business is only supportable if it’s an extension of one’s intellectual life.
Daisuke’s serenity is disturbed when, after a separation of three years, he meets Michiyo, Hiraoka’s wife, whom Daisuke loved without ever declaring himself. Instead, he had stepped aside to favor his friend. Now, however, Hiraoka has become an embezzler and philanderer and Michiyo a lonely, terminally sick woman. She has the self-effacing ways of the old-fashioned Japanese wife, but she doesn’t hesitate to beg money from the rich – and essentially naive – Daisuke. He falls in love all over again. —Senses of Cinema
Yoshimitsu Morita (森田 芳光, Morita Yoshimitsu?, 25 January 1950 – 20 December 2011) was a Japanese film director. Self-taught, he made his debut in 1981. In 1983 he won acclaim for his movie Kazoku Gēmu (The Family Game), which was voted the best film of the year by Japanese critics. This black comedy dealt with then-recent changes in the structure of Japanese home life. It also earned him the Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Award.
Morita has been nominated for eight Japanese Academy Awards, winning the 2004 Best Director award for Ashura no Gotoku. He also won the award for best director at the 21st Yokohama Film Festival for Keiho, and the award for best screenplay at the 18th Yokohama Film Festival for Haru. —Wikipedia
Best known for his 1983 comedy The Family Game (1983), Morita would also direct period melodramas and horror.
