Happy Hour

Description

One woman’s divorce provokes a seismic shift among four girlfriends in Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s intimate epic. Akari, Jun, Sakurako and Fumi (played by four actresses all making their debuts) are close friends living in Kobe, Japan, who get together frequently to catch up on one another’s lives. One afternoon, Fumi invites them all to a workshop taking place at her company, and in this set piece—one of several lengthy scenes in the film—Happy Hour starts to turn into something quite unexpected. The class involves several trust-building exercises that unfold in real time, and the sequence’s terrific attention to narrative and physical detail coupled with the charismatic presence of the leader Ukai make the viewer feel like a participant alongside the others. When most of the group, including the four protagonists, go out to dinner afterward and begin to share intimacies, Jun’s revelation of her impending divorce presents a shock to her other friends. Hamaguchi’s proposal in this extraordinary film is to let it unfold like life—there are times when elements develop rapidly, whether it be Sakurako’s teenage son surprising her with the news that his girlfriend is pregnant or an edgy confrontation between Jun and her soon-to-be ex, and times that unfold more slowly, like an author reading her short story and the awkward dinner that follows. In the same way that today’s “golden age of television” takes its time to delve into character, so does Happy Hour, and by the end of its 317 minutes, these four women seem less like fictional portraits in a film and more like friends. —Rod Armstrong

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