Dumplin’ (2018) ☆☆☆(3/4): This Is Her

Posted on December 18, 2021 by kaist455

Netflix movie “Dumplin’” is your average feel-good comedy drama flick which actually handles its genre clichés and conventions better than you may think. Sure, this is another familiar story of an adolescent heroine going all the way for more self-esteem and confidence, but the movie has plenty of wit, spirit, and heart at least, and you will gladly root for not only its young heroine but also several other characters around her.

At the beginning, Willowdean “Dumplin’” Dickson (Danielle Macdonald) tells us about how she grew up under the loving care of her dear aunt instead of her mother during her childhood years in a small city of Texas. Because her mother was frequently busy with those local beauty pageants as a famous former beauty queen, her aunt was usually the one to spend time with her, and she gladly shared her considerable enthusiasm toward those Dolly Parton songs with her young niece, who also soon became a big Dolly Parton fan just like her aunt.

However, Willowdean’s aunt passed away several months ago, and Willowdean cannot help but sense more of her aunt’s absence from time to time, but, at least, she gets some consolation from her best friend Ellen “Elle” Dryver (Odeya Rush), who has always been close to her mainly thanks to both of them being passionate Dolly Parton fans. In case of Willowdean’s mother, well, it seems that, besides her real job for supporting herself and her daughter, all she cares about is how to present herself well for her occasional guest appearances at a number of beauty pageants in Texas, and she is also always busy whenever she is about to supervise the annual beauty pageant in the city.

When she is later rummaging up all those old stuffs left by her aunt, Willowdean happens to discover something quite unexpected. It is an old application form for the local beauty pageant in the city, and that belonged to none other than her aunt. After learning that her aunt actually aspired to participate in that beauty pageant but then sadly gave up, Willowdean becomes quite determined about doing what her aunt could not do at that time, and Ellen is certainly willing to accompany Willowdean for support besides also submitting her application form just like her best friend.

Of course, things do not go that well from the beginning because Willowdean does not think much beyond submitting her application form to the pageant committee, which is incidentally led by her mother. Although quite caught off guard by her daughter’s unexpected action, Willowdean’s mother eventually allows Willowdean to join a number of other girls who are already quite prepared to compete with each other, and, as a fairly chubby girl who is understandably not so confident about herself, Willowdean soon finds herself being at a loss about what to do next.

Fortunately, besides Ellen, Willowdean comes to have two other girls willing to help her. While Millie Mitchellchuck (Maddie Baillio), a chubbier schoolmate of hers who has been ridiculed more than Willowdean at their school, is quite eager to try her best regardless of her, uh, relative physical disadvantage, Hannah Perez (Bex Taylor-Klaus), who is a glum but feisty girl passionate about women’s rights, is more interested in fighting against what the beauty pageant mainly represents, but both of them gladly provide some cheer and support to Willowdean, and they later have a pretty fun time together at a certain favorite place of her aunt, which I will let you see for yourself.

Meanwhile, Willowdean also finds herself becoming a bit estranged from Ellen due to their different viewpoints on the beauty pageant, but the screenplay by writer/co-producer Kristin Hahn, which is based on the novel of the same name by Julie Murphy, wisely avoids overplaying their accidental conflict. Ellen and other beauty pageant participants are depicted with some care and understanding, and our heroine comes to discern a bit of how important this seemingly superficial event really is to those pretty girls – and her mother, who turns out to be more serious and caring than she seems on the surface.

As earnestly rolling its story and characters toward the big finale, the movie diligently builds up its emotional momentum, and we come to care more about how the story will end, even though we already have a pretty good idea on that. I do not dare to spoil any of your entertainment, but I can say at least that I enjoyed how the movie smoothly glides from one expected moment to another with some small surprises for us.

Above all, the movie is anchored well by the strong lead performance from Danielle Macdonald, who has been more notable thanks to her acclaimed performance in “Patti Cake$” (2017). Besides balancing her character well between achingly low self-esteem and undeniably irrepressible spirit, Macdonald is believable in her character’s gradual growth along the story, and she is also supported well by Odeya Rush, Maddie Baillio, and Bex Taylor-Klaus, who bring each own personality to the story as Willowdean’s three different friends. While Luke Benward is likable as a lad who seems to be interested in getting closer to Willowdean, Harold Perrineau often steals the show as a certain crucial character in the story, and Jennifer Aniston effortlessly goes back and forth between comedy and drama as Willowdean’s mother.

In conclusion, “Dumplin’” is a fairly enjoyable Netflix product thanks to the director Anne Fletcher’s competent direction as well as the commendable efforts from her cast members, and it is a little shame that it was quickly put aside when it was released on Netflix three years ago. I did not expect much when I checked it out in this afternoon, but I was touched and amused enough on the whole, and that is enough for recommendation.

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About Endlessness (2019) ☆☆☆(3/4): About Absurdness

Posted on December 17, 2021 by kaist455

Roy Andersson’s latest film “About Endlessness”, which won the Silver Lion award for Best Direction when it was shown at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival, is as dry, absurd, and melancholic as you can expect from his work. Again, we are served with a bundle of many different weird comic scenes held together via the amusingly drab overall tone hovering over the film, and you will probably come to enjoy them once you are willing to embrace that distinctive mood and style of the movie.

After the opening scene which is clearly a homage to Marc Chagall’s 1918 painting “Over the Town”, the movie shows a man climbing up a stair with lots of stuffs held by his arms, and then he talks directly to us. Looking quite miserable to say the least, this dude tells a bit about how miserable his life has been, and the camera simply regards him from its static position until he looks all the more pathetic at the end of his speech.

In case of a Catholic priest who is clearly depressed, the movie depicts his hopeless melancholy via several scenes. At first, he is struggling to carry a big cross while wearing a thorny crown just like a certain famous historical figure, and he is also frequently flagellated by some of people following after him. As watching this very absurd moment, I was instantly reminded of that hilarious moment of group self-flagellation in “Songs from the Second Floor” (2000), which is the first film of Andersson’s Living Trilogy. Even though I did not wholly understand what this scene means, it felt fairly funny to me, and I came to have more expectation on whatever I would get next during my viewing.

And the movie did not disappoint me with the priest’s next scene, which is unfolded between him and his doctor. The priest seeks for any help or advice from his doctor, but the doctor does not seem to be that interested in that while flatly interacting with the priest. During the subsequent scene, we see the priest trying to go through a religious ceremony, and the mood becomes a bit anxious as the camera statically observes his apparently problematic condition from the distance.

And the movie continues to look at other different people, who are all dealing with their rather dull and cheerless existence in the world which simply seems to be moving onto one day after another without much care or attention. In one certain brief scene, the camera simply looks at a female business executive wordlessly looking outside from her big office, and the narrator of the film phlegmatically tells us that she is “incapable of feeling shame.” Although she does not reveal much, we can clearly sense her barren state of mind when she looks back at us at the end of this scene.

While steadily maintaining the grey atmosphere surrounding its various figures, the movie shows some little warmth and tenderness at times. In the scene unfolded at a train station, we see a man gladly welcomed by his family members shortly after a train’s arrival, and then we see a woman getting off from the train and then being left alone for a while – until she is eventually greeted by someone who seems to be close to her.

My little favourite moment in the film is involved with three young women who happen to drop by a certain public place. As the music is played in the background, they begin to dance together while others are amused and entertained by that, and their plucky spirit is palpable to us although the movie deliberately places them on one side of the screen from the beginning.

I also like a couple of scenes involved with one troubled dentist with some personal issue. He tries to handle his latest patient on one winter day, but things do not go that well due to both of them, and he eventually walks out from the scene with his patient helplessly left with his assistant. We soon see him at a bar with several others while it is snowing outside, and he remains glum and sour, even when one stranger tries to communicate a bit with him.

During its second half, the movie becomes more melancholic than before. We get a short scene showing Hitler’s last day in his bunker, and the movie later shows a bunch of defeated Nazi German soldiers trudging to somewhere. Around the end of the film, we meet again that miserable guy who appears around the beginning of the movie, and he remains pathetic as before while complaining about his life again in front of the camera – with, to our little amusement, his wife in the background.

While observing how the movie eventually arrives at its very last scene which resonates a lot with its very title, I came to reflect more on how Andersson has been consistent in terms of form, style, and mood during last two decades. Like his Living trilogy, the movie firmly sticks to its dry and absurd sense of humor coupled with a considerable level of melancholy, and that is often accentuated by its muted color scheme as well as the pale façade of the human figures in the film.

Although I am not so sure about whether “About Endlessness” is as great as the Living Trilogy, and it sometimes feels like a mere footnote in comparison, but I enjoyed its offbeat humor and melancholic beauty at least. I did not laugh as much as I expected, but I still admire its artistic qualities nonetheless, and I think you should check it out if you admire the Living Trilogy as much as I do.

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Amélie (2001) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): This charming quirky girl

Posted on December 17, 2021 by kaist455

What a charming comedy film “Amélie” is. Constantly buoyed by its vibrant wit, style, and imagination, this quirky French crowd-pleaser, which is re-released in South Korean theaters in this week, is still lovable and admirable for its numerous funny offbeat moments to be savored more than once, and it is always entertaining to watch how it cheerfully and mischievously bounces from one narrative point to another along with its undeniably fetching heroine.

Audrey Tautou, who had a major career breakthrough thanks to the considerable critical and commercial success of the film inside and outside France, plays Amélie Poulain, a likable young woman who has somehow maintained her plucky spirit well despite her rather unhappy childhood period. As shown from the opening part of the movie, she grew up under the parents who were not very sunny or cheerful to say the least, but she was daunted by that at all, and the omnipresent narrator of the film phlegmatically describes a number of variously amusing incidents around her – including her frigid mother’s hilariously morbid death.

Anyway, Amélie eventually leaves her hometown several years later, and then she comes to settle in a neighborhood of Montmartre, Paris while working as a waitress in a small local cafe, which is frequently filled with a number of different eccentric people. For example, there is a rather creepy guy who is still obsessed with his ex-girlfriend who is incidentally another waitress in the cafe, and the growing tension between him and his ex-girlfriend has been a constant source of amusement for others in the cafe.

Meanwhile, something unexpected occurs on one day in Amélie’s little solitary private life. She happens to discover a little metal box hidden behind a wall in her apartment, and, as looking over a number of old items stored inside that metal box, she cannot help but become curious about who owned it several decades ago. Although she usually prefers to be alone, she is often curious about how others are living in the city, and there is a little funny moment when she simply wonders about how many people are having orgasm right now.

The movie subsequently follows Amélie’s search for the owner of that metal box. Although her search seems to be going nowhere at first, she finally finds its real owner thanks to one of her neighbors, who kindly corrects a little but crucial mistake in her ongoing search process. I will not go into details on what she will do next, but I can tell you at least that you will be quite amused by how she gives that metal box back to the owner while also touched a lot by how much that emotionally affects the owner.

After that point, Amélie decides to do more good things to others around her, and the screenplay by Guillaume Laurant, which is based on the story written by him and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, generates lots of humor and warmth from how its heroine has some fun from a number of sneaky but well-intentioned deeds. For instance, she indirectly functions as a sort of matchmaker between that creepy dude and a grumpy hypochondriac woman running a cigarette shop in the cafe, and that eventually leads to one of the most uproarious moments in the film. In addition, she commits several mischievous things to a local grocer after watching this guy blatantly bullying his timid assistant as usual, and that indirectly helps the assistant having a bit more confidence and self-esteem than before.

However, Amélie turns out to be not that good at helping herself. When she comes across a lad named Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz) at the train station, she is instantly attracted to him, but he seems to be more interested in his little hobby during their accidental encounter, and that certainly lets her down a lot. Not long after that, she embarks on trying to get to know more about him and then attract his attention, but she only finds herself hesitating more, even though she comes to get more than one chances to reveal herself to him.

While there is naturally some suspense on whether our heroine will cross the line to get closer to Nino or not, the movie remains to be lightweight as before, and Jeunet, who has been known for several stylish offbeat works such as “Delicatessen” (1991) and “The City of the Lost Children” (1995), and his crew members including cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel keep delighting us with colorful mood and details to be cherished. Besides being nominated for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, the movie garnered four other nominations including the ones for Best Production Design and Best Cinematography Oscar, and it is quite impressive in technical aspects. Thanks to its distinctive mood and style, the movie steadily engages us from the very beginning, and we gladly go along with numerous quirky moments in the film.

Above all, the movie depends a lot on Tautou’s natural charm and presence. Her performance here in this film is still one of the best ones in her long movie acting career, and she is also supported well by a bunch of interesting performers including André Dussollier, Dominique Pinon, Yolande Moreau, Jamel Debbouze, and Mathieu Kassovitz, an actor/director who is mainly known for his electrifying crime drama film “La Haine” (1995).

On the whole, “Amélie” remains quite fun and enjoyable although 20 years have passed since it came out, and it is surely one of the highlights in Juenet’s idiosyncratic filmmaking career. Although things have recently been less positive for him, he is currently working a film to be released by Netflix at least, and I sincerely hope that it will be as charming as “Amélie”.

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This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): A little gem from Lesotho

Posted on December 16, 2021 by kaist455

“This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection”, which was the official selection of Lesotho for Best International Film Oscar in last year, is a small but unforgettable film to be admired and appreciated a lot for several good reasons. Leisurely unfolding its unadorned but poignant narrative on the screen, the movie gradually holds our attention via its distinctive local mood and details, and its seemingly plain but undeniably memorable moments will linger on your mind for a long time after you watch it.

After showing a brief blurry visual moment which baffles us a bit, the movie promptly looks into a dark and shabby place where several figures are idly spending some time. After slowly looking and moving around this place for a while, the camera eventually focuses on an old musician figure sitting alone in a corner, and this figure, who is played Jerry Mofokeng Wa Makhetha (You may remember this South African actor for his notable supporting role in Oscar-winning film “Tsotsi” (2005), by the way), comes to function as the narrator of the following story.

The center of the following story is an old woman named Mantoa (Mary Twala Mhlongo). She has lived alone in a small rural village located somewhere in Lesotho for many years, and she is certainly looking forward to seeing again her only son who is also her only surviving family member, but, alas, she is only notified later that her son, who has worked in some big mine far from the village, died for some unknown reason, and she is naturally devastated by her son’s unexpected death.

Calmly observing Mantoa’s subsequent morning period, the movie lets us gather more details about her village life. She has been respected by many others in the village as a witch doctor, and she is even visited by a local priest, who is willing to give her some pep talk as a decent guy who personally understands well how unbearable grief can be. Although he tries his best outside her little house, Mantoa’s grieving mind is already going somewhere as she keeps staying inside her residence, and the colorful interior of her residence makes a quiet but striking contrast to her current state of mind.

Meanwhile, the people of the village come to face a difficult choice to make. Due to a big dam to be built sooner or later at a nearby spot, the village is going to be flooded in water, and the government, which is mainly represented by a local politician, suggests that they all should relocate to some other place with some substantial compensation. Many of villagers are interested in accepting this offer from the government, but most of them are still hesitant about giving up their old hometown, and they are also concerned about how to handle the matters with their little cemetery where their deceased family members were buried.

In case of Mantoa, this situation invigorates her because, as an old lady who has almost nothing but her past which is closely connected with the village, she is determined to stick to her village till the end of her remaining years. When she actively draws the attention from others at one point, many of them are not so pleased at first, but it does not take much time for her to persuade them to be on her side, and the movie gives us a little spine-tingling moment of solidarity among her and others.

Now, the story seems to enter the territories of other similar small-town social drama films such as Robert Redford’s “The Milagro Beanfield War” (1988), but the screenplay by director/writer/editor Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, who previously made a feature film debut with “For Those Whose God Is Dead” (2013), simply stays focused on Mantoa and her fellow villagers while never overplaying their conflict with the ongoing dam project outside. During one particular scene where they gather around the priest as he writes a letter of petition, the camera merely observes them from its static position, but we slowly come to get the palpable sense of community from them, and their faces bring considerable human quality to this memorable moment.

Shot in 1.33:1 ratio by cinematographer Pierre de Villiers, the movie often shines with precise scene composition and interesting details, and I particularly admire one certain masterful scene among Mantoa and two other characters. While the camera steadily looks at Mantoa and one of these two characters, we also see the other character via a tiny mirror on the wall, and I would love to learn more about how Mosese and de Villiers prepared before shooting this visually impressive moment.

Above all, the movie is quietly held together by the strong lead performance from Mary Twala Mhlongo, which feels all the more poignant considering that the movie is one of her several last films before her death in last year. Although the movie often maintains some distance from her character, her solid performance steadily functions as the beating old heart of the film, and we come to understand her character more before the story eventually reaches to the point where her character comes to commit a bold act of defiance alone by herself.

In conclusion, “This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection”, which received the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Visionary Filmmaking when it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival early in last year, is a fascinating piece of work which deserves more attention in my humble opinion, and I must tell you that it relaxed and tranquilized me a lot after I experienced the fun and excitement of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021) at last night. In short, this is another highlight of 2021, and I sincerely urge you to check out this overlooked masterwork as soon as possible.

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Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) ☆☆☆(3/4): An entertaining IP mix with some heart

Posted on December 16, 2021 by kaist455

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a mostly entertaining Intellectual Property (IP) mix which actually made me care a little more than expected. While it is still considerably (and frustratingly) connected with Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) just like its two predecessors, the movie pays more attention to what makes its young superhero special and endearing to us, and that is why its expected finale works well with enough emotional resonance for us despite a number of weak aspects including its rather overstuffed narrative depending on our nostalgia a bit too much from time to time. 

The movie starts the story at the point not long after the very final scene of “Spider-Man: Far From Home” (2019). Besides his dual identity fully exposed in public thanks to the villain of the previous movie, Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland) also finds himself wrongfully charged for the killing of that villain, and that certainly causes lots of troubles for not only him but also several people who already knew about his dual identity. Although his two close high school friends Michelle ‘MJ’ Jones (Zendaya) and Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) still stand by him as before while preparing for college enrollment with him, both they and Parker get rejected by MIT due to his ongoing scandal and controversy, and Parker feels more guilty about how things have been turned upside down for them and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) because of him.

In the end, Parker goes to Stephen Stranger/Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) for getting any help, and, as a dude who has supernatural powers to exert over the dimensions of time and space, Stranger knows a certain special spell which can be the solution for Parker’s current messy circumstance. This spell will erase the currently common knowledge of Parker’s dual identity once for all in the whole universe, and Parker has no problem with that at first, but, of course, it turns out that there is a catch. Once the spell is completed, everyone including his friends and Aunt May will forget who he is, so he requests several seemingly minor modifications when Stranger embarks on conjuring the spell.  

Of course, things soon do not go that well, and Stranger aborts the process, but then he and Parker come to see what they inadvertently cause. Because Parker intervened on Stranger’s spell too much, the boundaries between parallel universes are broken, and that consequently brings a number of certain figures who are total strangers to Parker but are surely quite familiar to you if you have seen Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy in the 2000s and a couple of Spider-Man flicks in the following decade.

Considering that the trailer of the movie already exposed to us several figures with whom Parker will have to deal along the story, I guess I can talk a bit about how some of the main cast members gladly have an old fun in the film. Although almost 20 years have passed since he played that character in “Spider-Man” (2002), Willem Dafoe has not lost any of his edgy persona yet as recently shown from his baroque supporting turn in “The Lighthouse” (2019), and he surely utilizes that well as his character swings back and forth between good and evil. Like Dafoe, Alfred Molina, who was one of the main reasons for the greatness of “Spider-Man 2” (2004), relishes his several big moments in the film, and I am rather pleased to see Jamie Foxx looking better than his rather embarrassing performance in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” (2014), though his character development in the film turns out to be relatively contrived compared to Dafoe’s or Molina’s.    

Although it takes some time for getting things rolling as trying to balance its hero among numerous figures coming into his story, the movie mostly succeeds in engaging us well while our young superhero struggles to do right things for others associated with him. While we surely get several big action sequences as expected, they are fairly grounded well in story and characters, and director Jon Watts, who also directed two previous Spider-Man films, and his crew members including cinematographer Mauro Fiore and composer Michael Giacchino did a competent job of bringing enough sense of fun and excitement to the screen. I must confess that I often got confused a bit while watching the big showdown sequence around the end of the film for an understandable reason I do not dare to reveal here, but it is still exciting and exhilarating on the whole, and then you will be touched by how our young superhero actually becomes really matured at the end of his bumpy journey.

As the center of the film, Tom Holland is solid as before, and it is surely nice to see his character being more independent while not looking like that billionaire superhero’s lapdog anymore. In addition, he and Zendaya click better with each other than before, and Zendaya, who is already having another interesting year thanks to her small but crucial supporting turn in “Dune” (2021), brings some pluck and charm to her character. In case of the other notable cast members in the film, Benedict Cumberbatch, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Jacob Batalon, Benedict Wong, and J.K. Simmons comfortably slip into their familiar roles, but I must point out that Batalon is often demanded to function as the main comic relief of the story too much as before.     

On the whole, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is better than its two passable predecessors, but it does not reach to the level of “Spider-Man 2” or “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (2018), which is incidentally the best superhero film of the 2010s. While the movie entertained and touched me enough at last night, my mind still could not help but compare it with “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, and it still feels like a safe product compared to how boldly and creatively “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” went all the way for both drama and comedy.

Anyway, based on my usually trivial star rating system, I gave 3.5 stars out of 4 stars to the greatness of “Spider-man 2” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, and I also gave 2.5 stars to the plain existence of “Spider-man: Homecoming” (2017) and “Spider-Man: Far From Home”, so I give “Spider-Man: No Way Home” 3 stars. If you like its predecessors more than me, you will probably want to add extra half star to my rating, and I promise you I will not stop you from doing that.

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10 movies of 2021 – and more: Part 3

Posted on December 15, 2021 by kaist455

Now here are 12 South Korean films of this year.

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10 movies of 2021 – and more: Part 2

Posted on December 15, 2021 by kaist455

And here are the other 5 movies in my list – with other films good enough to be mentioned.

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10 movies of 2021 – and more: Part 1

Posted on December 15, 2021 by kaist455

Here are the first 5 movies in my list.

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10 movies of 2021 – and more: Introduction

Posted on December 15, 2021 by kaist455

Again, we are reaching to the end of another year, but, as many of you know, things have not been that good these days. We are still stuck with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and, as far I as can see, this may not go away even around the end of the next year. I was already vaccinated twice, but I and many others were recently notified that we should get a booster shot sooner or later, and that makes me feel more pessimistic about the next year.

Anyway, movie festivals returned with some caution during this year, and I have kept going to theaters as wearing a mask as before. At a few local movie theaters I have trusted a lot, I watched many interesting new movies during this year, and I also encountered a fair share of other good movies at my residence, though I still prefer to watch movies at theaters instead of my residence. That is why I was glad to see that several notable Netflix films were shown more widely in South Korean movie theaters before their eventual online release, and I hope this welcoming trend will be continued during next several years at least. I still do not like “The Harder They Fall” and “The Hand of God” enough, but I enjoyed watching them on a big screen nevertheless, and I was also exalted to behold “The Power of the Dog”, which is Jane Campion’s triumphant comeback besides being one the best films of this year.

Anyway, there are still a considerable number of small and big films released in 2021, and I have not watched some of those very good films of 2021 yet, but I have managed to watch and review around 300 movies during this year. As usual, I submit here the list of a bunch of good movies you should not miss, and I hope this list will help you have a more entertaining time later.

By the way, as an audience living in South Korea, I still cannot watch several notable films of this year including “Licorice Pizza”, “The Worst Person in the World”, “A Hero”, “Parallel Mothers”, “The Lost Daughter”, “The Souvenir, Part II”, “Nightmare Alley”, “The Tragedy of Macbeth”, and “West Side Story”. They all will soon be reviewed, and I will certainly mention them at the end of the next year if they are as good as others say.

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Happy Hour (2015) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): 4 Women

Posted on December 14, 2021 by kaist455

Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s “Happy Hour” is a challenging but ultimately rewarding experience you should give a chance someday. The movie will surely daunt you for its very long running time which is more than 5 hours (!), but it will gradually hold your attention thanks to the skillful handling of mood, story, and characters, and there are a number of wonderful moments to be savored and appreciated.

At the beginning, the movie, which is set in a Japanese city named Kobe, introduces us to four different women who have been close friends for more than 20 years. They are Akari (Sachie Tanaka), Sakurako (Hazuki Kikuchi), Fumi (Maiko Mihara), and Jun (Rira Kawamura), and the opening scene shows them having a little private picnic together at a local park around the city. As the movie calmly focuses on their plain conversation later, we come to sense more of how long they have known each other, and we become more immersed in the cheerful mood of their conversation as they talk about one thing after another for a while.

After this first long sequence in the film, we get to know more about their respective private lives. Unlike her three friends, Akari has been a single woman since her recent divorce, but she does not care much about being alone as mostly occupied with her busy daily work. She works as a nurse at some local hospital, and we come to discern that one of the doctors in the hospital is apparently interested in getting closer to her, but she pays more attention to a young nurse who really needs more lesson and experience for doing her jobs better.

On the surface, Sakurako has the most stable domestic life in the bunch, but it does not take much time for us to discern how much she has been suffocated by her domestic role. While her husband is usually absent due to his busy job, she is supposed to take care of all those domestic matters for herself, and she certainly feels more pressured when her mother-in-law happens to stay in her residence for an indeterminate period. In addition, her adolescent son turns out to have a little private matter behind his back, and we are not so surprised when that matter of his leads to something quite serious later in the film.

In case of Fumi, she and her husband have maintained an acceptable equilibrium between work and private life, but she cannot help but feel frustrated with how they have been more like roommates rather than a married couple, and that drives her more to her work. While her husband works as the editor of a notable female writer, she usually handles small cultural events, and she later gets her three friends to join a little private workshop along with her at one point.

The workshop is presented by a guy who has some interesting artistic skills and life philosophy, and the movie willingly spends a very long time with his workshop process. I must confess that I initially observed this guy with some skepticism, but then I found myself intrigued and amused by what he and others try to do for, supposedly, real human communication, and then this intriguing sequence is followed by another long conversation sequence as our four ladies and several other characters come to have a post-workshop meeting.

Their conversation initially feels casual and cheerful, but then there comes a sudden awkward moment when Jun comes to reveal that she has been trying to divorce her husband because she feels no love from him. While certainly caught off guard by how their friend has hided that from them, Jun’s friends decide to stand by her as usual, and we get another long sequence where Jun has to go through a rather grueling process at the court while her friends are there for giving her some support.

The mood becomes more pleasant when our four ladies subsequently go to a hot spring town outside Kobe, but then the movie goes for more plot conflict and development after a small but crucial narrative turn. As seeing how much Jun has been unhappy and miserable, her friends respectively come to reflect more on whether they have been really happy, and their growing doubt and anxiety naturally lead to several key moments to observe as each of them comes to make each own choice for their respective lives in one way or another.

Dexterously juggling its four different main characters from the beginning to the end, the movie also pays some attention to a number of supporting characters around them, who also contribute much to its rich overall experience. We are amused by the possibly romantic interaction between Akari and a certain supporting character, and then we are chilled and repulsed by how coldly articulately Jun’s husband describes his nearly loveless fixation on his wife. We are touched by how Sakurako’s mother-in-law turns out to be more supportive than expected, and we are intrigued by whatever is developing between Fumi’s husband and that young female writer, who later has a showstopper moment when she reads her latest work in front of several other characters and many other audiences.

To be frank with you, I was surprised to learn later that the four lead actresses of the film actually did not have any movie acting experience before selected by the director via a local workshop. I have no idea on how much they prepared before shooting many long sequences in the film, but the four lead actresses of the movie all look natural and effortless in their interactions on the screen, and that says a lot about Hamaguchi’s considerable filmmaking skill and talent.

Overall, “Happy Hour”, which is the longest Japanese feature film according to the IMDB trivia, surely demands some patience from you right from the beginning, but then it will interest and engage you a lot via its genuine human moments to be appreciated, and you will come to root for its four ladies a lot around the end of their emotional journey. It is quite long indeed, but its commendable achievement in terms of story and characters takes me back to what my mentor/friend Roger Ebert once said: “No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is short enough.”

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