29/08/2024 - VENICE 2024: The French-Japanese film by Kohei Igarashi delicately tells the story of a sudden bereavement and traces the birth of a tender love by the sea

Hiroki Sano, Nairu Yamamoto and Yoshinori Miyata in Super Happy Forever

The sudden loss of a beloved is at the centre of Super Happy Forever [+see also:
trailer
interview: Kohei Igarashi
film profile], the new film by Japanese filmmaker Kohei Igarashi (Hold Your Breath Like a Lover, co-director with French filmmaker Damien Manivel of The Night I Swam [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Damien Manivel, Kohei Igara…
film profile]), which opened the competition of the 21st Giornate degli Autori at the Venice Film Festival. The joyous title of the film seems to contradict its theme, if it weren’t for the fact that happiness is also discussed in this film divided exactly into two parts: the first dedicated to the difficult elaboration of a cruel mourning and the second centred on the telling of a tender love that begins by the sea, recalled in a play of inverted temporal planes.

The location is the same, but the periods are different. The film begins in 2023. Sano (Hiroki Sano) returns with his friend Miyata (Yoshinori Miyata) to the place where, five years earlier, he met his wife Nagi: a seaside town in Japan called Izu. The hotel room is the same as in 2018, with a spectacular view of the sea. But Sano doesn’t seem happy and looks for a red hat lost years prior, and when they ask him about his wife on the telephone, he loses his patience and throws the phone in the water. The young man is apathetic, grumpy, silently desperate. His friend tries to instil in him some trust in life, but with little success. After a while, we discover the reason: Sano has recently lost his beloved Nagi, who suddenly died in her sleep. One night, he drinks until he’s sick, and pushes Miyata’s tolerance level to the limit.

In the same hotel room where Sano finds refuge, while listening to a song that reminds him of his wife, Nagi appears (Nairu Yamamoto), with her trolley and determined to enjoy her holiday. In reality, we have stepped back to 2018, when the woman didn’t yet know her future husband. A little while later, a bizarre coincidence makes their eyes meet in the hall of the hotel, where Sano is spending his holidays with his loyal friend Miyata. We therefore witness the beginning of a nice friendship between the three of them and, little by little, of something more between Sano and Nagi. Everything happens over one night, and a red baseball cap will play a central role in the beginning of their story – as will an old song (Beyond the Sea by Bobby Darin) that recurs in various forms.

Starting from the end of a love story, and telling us about it when it has yet to begin, is a way to bring the joy and the beautiful experiences back to the screen, after a dramatic beginning. At a certain point, Super Happy Forever could seem like a romantic comedy, if it weren’t for this sense of melancholy that doesn’t abandon us, already knowing how the story will end. The chemistry between the actors is palpable: one top of the trio of protagonists, there is also Hoang Nhu Quynh, who plays Anh, the Vietnamese girl who redoes the hotel rooms, a secondary character that reveals herself to be more important than expected. The whole is presented with a grace that envelops, enchants and comforts.

Super Happy Forever was produced by MLD Films (France) and Nobo (Japan). International sales are handled by French outfit BAC Films.

(Translated from Italian)

Photogallery 28/08/2024: Venice 2024 - Super Happy Forever

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Kohei Igarashi, Yoshinori Miyata
© 2024 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it