As the title of my review says, this movie is dealing with domestic violence and child abuse. The problem of this movie is that it does so from a very Japanese point of view and based on situations that either don't exist in reality or must be applicable only in Japan. In other words the weakest part of the movie is the plot. Spoilers ahead.

The mother of three adolescent children kills her extremely violent and abusive towards them husband ( and father of these children), knowing that she is going to go to jail, in order to save them and free them from his abuse. The brutality that the father has already shown to his own children, is what justifies literally and figuratively her action.

Fifteen years later she is released from jail in order to go back and find that not all of her children appreciated her sacrifice while the family's social circle is divided. Some justify the killing of the abusive husband and some others call her a murderess and have already ostracized the murderess' children.

The problem with this situation as it is presented on the film, is that the children are shown sooo brutally and so obviously abused in the first part of the film , that makes the viewers wonder why the police didn't interfere in the first place in order to arrest the father. The children are so badly beaten up and injured that I doubt that their case wouldn't have been recorded at the hospital, that provided medical help to these children. Which in its turn raises questions about why the mother was sentenced for so many years in prison, leaving as a consequence the children on their fate to grow up with a guardian blaming their mother for what happened to them.

The acting is great the music decent but the plot that deals with such a serious matter as domestic violence, exaggerates everything up to the point of not being believable.

Unless such situations do indeed happen this way in modern Japan. Do they?