True Mothers

In Kawase’s delicate hands, however, it breathes with an everyday poignancy.

Naomi Kawase’s films don’t hammer toward arbitrary plot points but flow like water, so “True Mothers” doesn’t unfold like a Hollywood blockbuster, or indeed, even most arthouse films. It courses along softly and confidently, with unexpected ebbs and estuaries.

It is, at least in its closing hour, a moving dramatization of maternal feelings.

The film shimmers with beauty and sadness despite its length, and the Japanese director’s background as both a photographer and a documentary filmmaker brings a gossamer naturalism to this realistic tale about a young woman’s regrets over abandoning her child years after the fact.

Kawase’s frequent use of handheld camera gives parts of the film a quasi-documentary feel, but it’s the lyrical touches . . . that hit the hardest.

There is a sustained emotional seriousness in this movie, with committed performances.

Adapting Mizuki Tsujimura’s novel of the same name helps impose more of a narrative framework than is typically found in Kawase’s oeuvre, although the film’s mix of genres — from marital drama to teen romance to social commentary — don’t gel.