A Missing Part Review: Families Lost in Translation

Romain Duris reunites with Guillaume Senez for A Missing Part, a moving drama in which culture clashes and familial estrangement push a father to the edge.

Frenchman Jay (Romain Duris, The Animal Kingdom) has waited almost a decade to reconnect with his long-lost daughter. He’s still technically married to the wife who took young Lily (Mei Cirne-Masuki) and disappeared all those years ago, knowing that according to Japan‘s rigid family laws, divorce would spell the end to whatever hope for a reunion with his child remains. He is a member of a small community of Tokyo-based foreigners, or gaijin, all with their own similar stories of child abduction, estrangement and the feeling that they are not understood, or particularly welcome.

Everything about Jay’s life is in flux, his existence defined by impermanence and otherness. Stuck in this often hostile country, excluded from his own family, he’s finally beginning the process of packing up and returning, reluctantly, to his motherland. Even his vocation has a sense of transience: as a taxi driver, he snakes through the streets at the whims of others, constantly moving but never really arriving anywhere. And yet, it is through this work that he finally gets his chance at resolution, as a change of shift brings him an unexpected regular passenger: Lily.

The film’s finest visual work comes in the scenes that follow, father and daughter confined to a single space together, though the latter doesn’t know it yet. Cinematographer Elin Kirschfink plays with depth of field to create a distance between the two, complemented by the awkward positioning of our characters. Jay glimpsing Lily through the rearview mirror, while she gets flashes of his eyes and the back of his head, facilitates a gorgeous expression of their disconnect. Our protagonist hesitates to reveal the truth, unwilling to break the spell; his fear of what may happen should he speak out becomes yet another language barrier to overcome.

Duris, who reunites with Senez after another fatherhood-themed drama, Our Struggles, gives one of his most nuanced performances yet as Jay. He is a man who has become accustomed to this state of limbo, which his compatriot, and fellow member of the cut-off parent club, Jessica (Judith Chemla) urges him to snap out of. Chemla is a refreshing, often comic, tonic to the listlessness of her opposite; her character’s own wounds are still fresh, the fire still in her belly, and it’s clear she sees Jay’s stasis as a cautionary tale. If there’s a criticism to be made of the film, it’s that Jessica’s arc fizzles out as Jay and Lily take centre stage. Meanwhile, Cirne-Masuki is a more-than-worthy match for her experienced co-stars, unveiling Lily’s fears and discomforts as a fatherless, mixed-race young woman with remarkable gentleness.

One wonders how A Missing Part will be received in Japan, whose stringent rules and the complacent culture that upholds them are shed in quite the unflattering light. While there is hope – Japan’s laws appear to be changing, becoming the last G7 nation to recognise the concept of joint custody – Serez’s film raises questions that go beyond mere legislation, interrogating the attitudes that make up a country’s social fabric. That he manages to achieve such ambitions without sacrificing the movie’s intimacy speaks volumes about his craftsmanship. This is incisive filmmaking with a beating human heart.

A Missing Part was screened at TIFF on September , 2024. Read our review of the taxi-set Daddio!