True Mothers has a rather unique narrative configuration. Though its story is driven by actions in the present, the bulk of its emotional development is told through extended flashbacks akin to short stories, which provide context for the adult characters’ motivations. Unorthodox as this nonlinearity may be, it makes for an absorbing character study about the adoption process and how it weighs down on both the giver and receiver of motherhood.

For Satoko (Hiromi Nagasaku) and Kiyokazu (Arata Iura), raising their adopted son, Asato (Reo Sato), means everything. As revealed via flashback, their previous attempts to conceive were hindered by Kiyokazu’s diagnosis of azoospermia, which rendered his sperm count nonexistent. Despondent at first, they eventually settled on an adoption program called Baby Baton, which allows families to give the newborn children of mothers either too young or lacking in necessary resources a future. The policy requirements established by its founder are strict but necessary for the child’s well-being, with present-day Asato fully knowing and accepting his adoptive status. He might have problems at school—something that takes up the film’s opening act—but there’s nothing to suggest an unhealthy family dynamic.

Then one day Satoko receives a phone call from a woman claiming to be Hikari (Aju Makita), Asato’s birth mother. She wants her son back, albeit with little rationale for this demand, and her attempts at blackmail feel more desperate than malicious, causing the couple to accuse her of being a fraud. Her actions not only threaten the life they’ve made together with Asato but because Hikari’s face is initially obscured in this confrontational scene, the film heightens the audience’s own feelings of uncertainty of the young woman’s identity. Because we only know the couple’s perspective up to this point, we’re subconsciously nudged into sharing their fears before even knowing the complete story.

Thankfully, director Naomi Kawase uses this setup not to exaggerate melodrama about which parent is more worthy of the child’s love but rather to explore parenthood as an extension of their desires and insecurities. This is especially the case with Hikari, whose story takes up the film’s back half and details the struggle she undergoes after an innocent school crush leads to pregnancy at 14, which upends her life and forces her to spend time at Baby Baton’s coastal residence house during the late trimesters.

If the film’s story has an issue, it’s Asato—the boy at the center of all this. Outside the aforementioned school conflict, his purpose is to be an object of motherly pursuit or protection. With so much time devoted to exploring the other characters, the emotional investment surrounding Asato is ironically at its strongest when he’s a newborn. He’s not exactly a MacGuffin, but neither is he a fleshed-out character.

At nearly two hours and 20 minutes, True Mothers links many time lines together, but clearly the director seems more interested in the backstory segments than its main story line. It still works thanks to Kawase’s visual style, which intentionally juxtaposes the parent’s conflicted emotional states against gorgeously scenic images that dissuade negative thoughts: forests, birds, and particularly water. The sea is a notable motif, referenced in the landscape surrounding the Baby Baton home and a conversation between Satoko and Asato about how water connects everything together.

The more you learn about the backstories, the less you want to see these people come to blows over someone whom they share the same love. It’s that shared emotional connection which helps make True Mothers succeed. It covers a lot of ground but imbues its characters with enough pathos to reveal how this singular birth and adoption shaped lives differently over the years, as well as why the adults’ motives all deserve empathy. When the audience is naturally conflicted over which side to take, that’s a sign of good filmmaking.