The switched-baby format has been dormant in film for some time now. One of cinema’s great living kid-wranglers, director Hirokazu Koreeda, brings the once popular genre to life in the overlong, occasionally poignant Like Father, Like Son.

As always, Koreeda is capable of subtle, tender moments, but the too-stark contrast between the victimized families oversimplifies the story. Masaharu Fukuyama plays an essentially stereotypical character: a cold, swaggering, success-chasing Tokyo architect. He’s pushing the boy he believes is his son hard, right at the beginning of the child’s scholastic care (age six). Meanwhile, down in southern Japan, the architect’s actual son is being raised by a much more easygoing dad, Yudai (Riri Furanki), the tattooed, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing proprietor of a funky hardware store.

Furanki’s presence proves the Howard Hawks principle that you ought to try to make a comedy out of your story. When you see the sympathy Koreeda has for this happy-go-lucky slob, you wonder why the director bothered opening the film with the workaholic in his blood-freezing modern apartment. Yudai has so much grit that he’s even openly looking forward to the settlement the hospital is going to lay on him for their mistake. Homer Simpson could not be earthier. But, naturally, Yudai is too perfect a character, with no arc to follow, and it’s the architect who needs to rescue his inner child.

There’s never been a switched-baby melodrama without third-act problems, and this lauded drama is no exception. There are times in the film when you’re certain that Koreeda is as good as Mike Leigh or the Dardenne brothers in dramatizing the banal thought that the human race’s refusal to acknowledge the familial ties among us worsens the world. This switched-at-birth situation takes on a sad plausibility in those instances, and you wonder what you’d do if it happened to you.

See it now, and see it before the inevitable insufferable American remake. Word will be getting out about Gloria.

There’s usually a good turnout for a film about a divorcée going wild—”women of a certain age” never lose the habit of movie-going. Yet instead of a film about a woman’s self-consciousness and shyness, there’s genuine heat in Gloria, in which the inevitable and insufferable is certain to geld.

Gloria (Paulina García) is a Santiagoan divorced for 10 years. Out dancing one night, she meets the courtly Rodolfo (Sergio Hernández), an ex–naval officer now running a paintball emporium. Though age has seasoned Gloria’s body, director Sebastián Lelio insists this be a meeting of bodies as well as minds (Gloria’s getting glaucoma and has to keep her glasses on when they tryst).

By adding more background details of the lead characters’ lives and throwing in some politics, Gloria, the official Chilean selection for the upcoming Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Film category, does what the standard American rom-com doesn’t. The film notes the student unrest current in Chile, and also shows how coolly Gloria’s family welcomes Rodolfo: the Chilean navy committed some of the worst crimes of the fascist regime.

Despite Chile’s past, Leilo shows us a culture alive to pleasure. We get the delight of seeing our characters spend a dirty weekend in Viña del Mar and attend a dinner party where an impromptu samba breaks out. And I like the ardor with which Gloria looks at everything: a consoling pisco sour, a man she’s about to husk out of his clothes, even a tiny skeleton marionette wielded by a street performer. Here, we see her get on her knees and stare the puppet down. This is a woman who gets the memento mori joke and has decided not to be amused or afraid.

‘Gloria’ is screening at the Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. 415.454.1222.