A Review on a Japanese Film 'Our Little Sister'

choi

AO Scott, See What We Found at Daddy's Funeral. New York Times, July 8, 2016.
www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/movies/our-little-sister-review.html
(review of the 2015 film Our Little Sister, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda)

Note:
(a)
(i) Hirokazu KOREEDA 是枝 裕和
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirokazu_Koreeda
(1962- )

The pronoun "kore" and noun "eda" means "this" and "twig" in Japanese.
(ii) Our Little Sister   海街diary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Little_Sister

(b)
(i) "the soundtrack swells with string [stringed instruments]-heavy, melodramatic music. The lushness of the sound seems at odds with the plainness of the images, and this discrepancy establishes a tone that will last through the rest of this delicate and satisfying film. Characters may refrain from expressing the strong emotions that flow beneath the surface of their daily lives, but every so often the music (composed by Yoko Kanno) will remind us of the existence of those feelings."

Yōko KANNO  菅野 よう子
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko_Kanno
(1964- )

The noun 菅 is sedge.
(ii) Director Kore-eda's two other films:  " 'Nobody Knows 誰も知らない' (2005) is the story, based on news accounts, of a group of siblings fending for themselves in the Tokyo apartment where they had been left by their overwhelmed mother. 'Still Walking 歩いても 歩いても' (2009) is grounded in the routines of an elderly couple whose surviving children have grown up and moved away."

(c) "At their father's funeral in a faraway coastal town, the sisters — Sachi 幸 (Haruka AYASE 綾瀬 はるか), Yoshino (Masami NAGASAWA 長澤 まさみ) and Chika 千佳 (Kaho 夏帆 [a screen name]) — discover another sibling, 13-year-old Suzu (Suzu HiROSE 広瀬 すず), who seems destined for a pre-ball Cinderella existence with her unsympathetic stepmother. Suzu's half sisters, to stay with the fairy-tale metaphor, do the Prince Charming job of rescuing her from that fate, bringing her to live with them. She enrolls in school, joins a soccer team, and becomes a helpful and cheerful member of the household.  'Our Little Sister,' adapted from a popular manga series] of the same title] by Akimi YOSHIDA 吉田 秋生"
(i) Japanese English dictionary"
* sachi 幸 【さち】 (n): "good luck; fortune; happiness"
(ii) All four sisters shared the same father (surnamed KŌDA 香田, which is also the surname of the four sisters) who had just died. The 13-year-old Suzu is a half-sister, who had a different biological mother that her elder sisters.  (The "kō" is Chinese pronunciation of kanji 香.)

(d) "The four sisters are sharply drawn, their distinctive personalities a few crosshatchings away from caricature."

cross-hatch (vt): "(in drawing or graphics) shade (an area) with intersecting sets of parallel lines"
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/cross-hatch