“Nobody Knows” is based on real events, but the grip of the movie has nothing to do with its tabloid source material. This is the story of four young children abandoned by their mother in a miniscule Tokyo apartment, and how they cling together under increasingly intolerable conditions. A story, in other words, so innately pathetic, so inescapably cute-tragic, so predictable in its soliciting of sympathy and outrage, that for a serious filmmaker to take it on amounts to a dare: Can I pull it off?

It turns out you can, more or less, if you are Hirokazu Kore-Eda, the gentle, observant, deeply empathic director of “Maborosi” and “After Life.” It will surprise no one familiar with those films that his latest picture is calm and careful, wise and kind, suffused with subtle performances and subtler luminescence.

He has a splendid visual partner in cinematographer Yamazaki Yutaka, whose twilight cityscapes are surpassingly lovely, and an inspired provider of music in the pop duo Gontiti, who pluck symphonies of feeling from a ukulele. But the show belongs to the children, particularly to Vagira Yuya as Akria, eldest boy in the family.

One of the happiest moments of last year’s Cannes Film Festival was the announcement that Mr. Yuya could not be on hand to pick up his Best Actor prize as he was studying for exams. Cannes juries are famous for their controversial acting prizes, but in this case the 11-year-old more than deserved his accolade. His performance eschews the mechanisms of acting, or at least renders them invisible. To say that he strikes no false note gets it wrong; he doesn’t appear to be holding any instruments whatsoever.

As the movie opens, Akira is moving into a new apartment with his boozy, helium-voiced mother Keiko (Japanese pop star You). Unbeknownst to the landlords, they’ve smuggled two little ones into the tiny apartment inside suitcases. Another, eldest daughter Kyoko (Kitaura Ayu), is arriving from the train station.

Once unpacked and gathered around a dinner of instant noodles, rambunctious Shigeru (Kimura Hiei), adorable Yuki (Shimizu Momoko), and their older siblings are told the house rules. No loud noises and no going to school. In fact, no going outside at all. Ever.

Keiko leaves for long periods of time, putting Akira in charge. She returns less and less frequently, leaving smaller and smaller sums of money behind. Eventually, she never comes home at all. “Nobody Knows” becomes a study of sibling solidarity, unmoored from any larger gravity, floating through space.

For the better part of two hours, Mr. Kore-Eda’s calm eye atomizes their claustrophobic universe with extraordinary intimacy and delicacy: stooping to examine their feet (tip-toed and flip-floping, besneakered or bare, poignant or frisky); burrowing into their pastimes (crayon drawings on utility shut-off notices); hovering over their naptimes, adventures, and moments of fearful introspection.

There are wondrous touches throughout. Long banned from the balcony, Shigeru finally claims it as his own, and immediately colonizes it with an army of bright plastic toys. When it becomes clear that keeping a low profile is less important than a breath of fresh air, Akira takes everyone out for a trip to the market and a romp in the playground, flooding the movie with palpable elation.

This exhilarating, heartbreaking moment is one of dozens that nearly sustain a small-scale tour-de-force. Nearly: It feels somewhat miserly to say of such a loving, skillful film that it’s over-extended by half an hour or more. Clearly, Mr. Kore-Eda sees the story as a medium for spiritual allegory rather than for tear jerking, but that doesn’t excuse a shot of weeds struggling up from cracks in the playground, nor their cultivation in a garden of empty noodle cups. The sunlight is exquisite, but symbols die if you over water them.

Still, what’s a little root-rot so long as flowers grow: “Nobody Knows” is a rare bloom.

***

When a movie about the lancing of emotional cancers begins in an open heart surgery ward, you know you’re not in the subtlest of hands. Dumb, blunt, and spurious to the bone, “Daybreak” sneers at a group of middle-class Swedes engaged in pettiness, paranoia, and flamboyant emotional revenge.

Writer-director Bjorn Runge gives his actors a good deal of tasteful Scandinavian scenery to chew on, and they happily oblige, spazzing their way through a sub-Dogme schematic of cruelty, betrayal, confession, and atonement. But get this: The movie is called “Daybreak” because in the morning everybody learns a nice little life lesson.

After sewing up his raw, quivering metaphor, heart surgeon Rickard (Jakob Eklund) finds out he’s not getting that big promotion he was promised. Despondent, he breaks off with his mistress, the wife of a colleague, who tells him she’s pregnant with his child. Rickard sulks home to his wife (Pernilla August) and prepares to host a dinner party for – his mistress and the cuckolded colleague!

Meanwhile, after throwing a bitter, semi-psychotic tirade at her doctor, resentful divorcee Anita (Ann Petren) stomps off with a handful of tranquilizers. These she promptly begins selling to junkies in an underground parking lot, one of whom offers to trade a stun-gun for some dope. Next thing you know, Anita storms in on her meek ex-husband, duct-tapes him to a chair, and angrily berates him while electrocuting his new (much younger) lady friend.

Completing the trio of cross-cut contrivances, Anders (Magnus Krepper), a bricklayer, is getting flack from his family for working too much. Nonetheless, he accepts a bizarre new job: bricking up the windows and doors of a house owned by a pair of angsty xenophobes. They have “lost” their daughter to a Nigerian Muslim and suffered numerous robberies at the grubby hands of immigrants. Anders draws a line at their request to leave a small hole next to every window so they might defend their property with a semi-automatic rifle.

Rickard’s dinner party grows increasingly grotesque, as his guests disclose an improbably nasty comeuppance for their philandering host. Near daybreak, he packs a bag and runs out on his family who, in a very silly scene, get into a car and chase him all over the neighborhood.

Anita’s revenge peaks in savagery and starts to run out of steam. Near daybreak, taking the long way home, she decides to chuck her stun gun in the river.

After prying into a locked room of his loony client’s house, Anders has a carpe diem moment and – near daybreak! – returns to his family.

I’d be lying if I said “Daybreak” wasn’t well acted and capably directed, but I’d be a dunce to think it anything more than hokum. Mr. Runge isn’t interested in people arriving at the light, but in the nasty pleasures of vindictive darkness. He’s Lars von Trier in sheep’s clothing.