Five years separate the two halves of “Super Happy Forever,” a delicate, unassuming but subtly complex love story in reverse that doesn’t dart between timelines, instead offering the past as a bittersweet chaser to the present. It’s a gap short enough for little to have changed at the sleepy Japanese beach resort where the film is set: Faces and places stay much the same, though melancholic protagonist Sano (Hiroki Sano) has perhaps too much faith in the time-bridging powers of a hotel’s lost-and-found desk. A key absence, however, makes every carried-over similarity from the past feel to Sano like a cruel reproach. In Kohei Igarashi’s elegant fourth feature, the stifling atmosphere of grief precedes our acquaintance with its object; our sadness laps Sano’s own.
A mellow opening film for this year’s Venice Days program, the ruefully titled “Super Happy Forever” sees Igarashi working in a breezier,...
A mellow opening film for this year’s Venice Days program, the ruefully titled “Super Happy Forever” sees Igarashi working in a breezier,...
- 8/29/2024
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Tsugaru city has been the subject of a number of films throughout the years, with one of the first being Atg’s “Tsugaru Folk Song” exactly 50 years ago. Now, a new movie focuses on another aspect of the area that stands out, the lacquerware industry, once more, though, in order to make a number of social comments about life in the area and how difficult it can be escaping tradition. The movie is based on the novel “Japan Dignity” by Miyuki Takamori.
Tsugaru Lacquer Girl is screening at Camera Japan
Traditional lacquerwork kitchenware is the Aoki family’s legacy, but is also in decline, with the financial prowess of Seishiro’s father being nowhere to be found at the time the movie starts. Seishiro, however, knows nothing else to do, and so he keeps at it, with the help of his daughter, Miyako, who also works at a supermarket in...
Tsugaru Lacquer Girl is screening at Camera Japan
Traditional lacquerwork kitchenware is the Aoki family’s legacy, but is also in decline, with the financial prowess of Seishiro’s father being nowhere to be found at the time the movie starts. Seishiro, however, knows nothing else to do, and so he keeps at it, with the help of his daughter, Miyako, who also works at a supermarket in...
- 9/29/2023
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
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