Sato-san to Sato-san (2025)

Changing gender roles and marriage in modern Japan

The story of the unravelling of a marriage as a couple struggle after circumstances force a reversal of traditional gender roles. The film charts the course of their entire 15 year relationship with canny observations and a rueful tone. While the relationship falters due to the couple's own failings, the film aptly illustrates the pressures of a society that still treats stay-at-home dads as second-class citizens and working mothers as lousy parents.

The subject is treated seriously within a well written and filmed story about two imperfect but sympathetic relatively likeable people. Though some interpreted this film as a critique of modern gender roles where encouraging women to prioritize their careers is to the detriment of the family, what stuck me was how much pain and suffering would have been avoided had both leads not been conditioned by their upbringing into assuming that the husband should always be more intelligent and capable than the wife and kept trying to force this assumption no matter how obvious it became that the opposite was true. But watch the film and decide for yourself.

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