I Wish
(Kiseki)

Koichi and Ryunosuke are separated by their parents’ break-up. The first lives with his mother at his grandparents’ house, the second with his Bohemian father in a small apartment in another town. We might be tempted to see in I Wish nothing more than another Kore-eda film about childhood. However, after Lessons from a Calf (1992) and Nobody Knows (2004), the film’s English title, I Wish, on the contrary signals the filmmaker’s need to re- turn to the challenge of childhood in order to banish his fear of excessive craftsmanship. Like Koichi and Ryunusuke who devise a way to meet up again, Kore-eda traces a sinuous path, patient and sensitive, as if searching for the miraculous instants of his first film. JB