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SFFILM Festival

Happy Hour

Directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

Japan | 317

27 Apr
Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 12:30 pm PT

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

Director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi was born in 1978 and studied at Tokyo University of the Arts and graduated with a Masters in Film. His 2008 student feature, Passion, was screened at San Sebastian while his subsequent feature The Depths (2010) played at Tokyo Filmex. From 2011-2013, he directed a series of documentaries before returning to narrative storytelling. He developed Happy Hour partly through an improvisational acting workshop held in Kobe. He suggests that the crux of the resulting film reflects each woman’s questioning, “Am I the person who I really wanted to be?”

Trailer

//player.vimeo.com/video/157228604?autoplay=1

Film Details

Language Japanese

Year 2015

Runtime 317

Country Japan

Director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

Producer Satoshi Takata, Hideyuki Okamoto, Tadashi Nohara

Writer Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Tadashi Nohara, Tomoyuki Takahashi

Cinematographer Yoshio Kitagawa

Music Umitarô Abe

Cast Sachie Tanaka, Hazuki Kikuchi, Maiko Mihara, Rira Kawamura