Ryota Nakano’s heartwarming comic drama “Bring Him Down to a Portable Size” deals with the death of an incorrigible scapegrace who lied as easily as he breathed. But its aim, more fully realized than I imagined going in, is sympathy and even celebration.
Based on a nonfiction essay by Riko Murai, the film is the latest by Nakano themed on irretrievable loss, including the hits “Her Love Boils Bathwater” (2016) and “The Asadas” (2020). And like all his films, beginning with his 2012 feature debut “Capturing Dad,” it mixes laughs and tears, a formula perfected by “Tora-san” series director Yoji Yamada, to whom Nakano is often compared.
However, while Yamada’s wandering tramp Tora was already a fantastical figure when the series started in 1969, Nakano’s latest is grounded in a real-life sibling relationship, if one viewed through a softening lens, with the harsher moments blurred or elided.
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