Harmonium’: Bad karma haunts family in riveting tale

Toshio (Kanji Furutachi, very good) leads a boring life in a drab Japanese suburb, and family conversations at the dinner table seem to barely register with him.

Much to the chagrin of Toshio’s religious wife, Akie (Mariko Tsutsui, excellent), Toshio allows Yasaka to stay at the house, without her permission or a reasonable explanation.

Akie is also not amused when Yasaka emerges from the bathtub in next to nothing, but she changes her tune when the stranger gives harmonium lessons to her young daughter, who clearly is not a prodigy of the instrument.

At first, the proceedings come off as a complex love triangle and a wry examination of suburban malaise, but family secrets start to emerge, and an unexpected tragedy keeps building upon itself.

Director Koji Fukada (who won a jury award at Cannes for this film) never resorts to melodramatics, and instead allows the carefully calibrated performances to give the movie its disquieting power.