For the first 40 minutes, this film’s title feels like a poke in the eye. There is nothing remotely happy about twentysomething Sano (Hiroki Sano). His wife has just died suddenly in her sleep, and Sano is visiting the sleepy Japanese seaside town where they met five years ago. He is rude and sullen, and obsessive about finding a red baseball cap he lost on that first visit. In the pain and anger of his grief, everyone sounds vapid and dumb, their words meaningless blah-blah-blah.
It’s hard to see where the happy fits in, until the film flips back in time. In the same hotel five years ago, Sano first claps eyes on his wife Nagi (Nairu Yamamoto) in a chance meeting in the hotel lobby. Yamamoto gives the performance of the film as aspiring photographer Nagi: funny, scatty and earnest. She plays it so naturally, so true to life, that Nagi feels like someone you might have actually met. She and Sano wander around town, young and free: dancing in a club, eating instant noodles. There is a glow to these scenes, a bit like in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, which similarly bottles the heart-flutter moment of something clicking, flirtation that feels like more than flirting.
In essence it’s a love story in reverse. In the part set five years earlier, director Kohei Igarashi’s script becomes almost like a mystery, following the clues dropped like a trail of crumbs in the first part. (So that explains why he’s so desperate to find the red cap!) A young Vietnamese chambermaid who works in the hotel plays an important role – and the point is gently made that she doesn’t have the luxury of wafting around town for a day.
There is something in here about chance and fate, but the film is too natural, too intimate to go too heavy on themes. It is gentle, straightforward drama, beautifully acted and emotionally tuned in. Its message is obvious but true: things can be super happy, just not forever.
• Super Happy Forever is on Mubi
