Taeko and Jiro live together with six-year-old Keita, from Taeko’s first marriage. Also living in the same building are Jiro’s parents, whose disdain for their son having married a divorcee is all too evident. When a birthday party goes horribly awry, long-suppressed recriminations surface.

Love, loneliness, death, and deafness: they’re explored to moving ends in award-winning Japanese filmmaker Kôji Fukada’s latest. A gentle melodrama entwining heartbreak with surprising levity, Love Life is an enchanting, clever look at cherishing one’s existence and what it means to be a family.