Non-Abstract Review: Happy Hour (2015)

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Dir: Ryūsuke Hamaguchi

Screenplay: Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, Tadashi Nohara and Tomoyuki Takahashi

Cast: Rira Kawamura as Jun, Hazuki Kikuchi as Sakurako, Maiko Mihara as Fumi, Sachie Tanaka as Akari, Hiroyuki Miura as Takuya, Yoshitaka Zahana as Kohei, Shuhei Shibata as Ukai

[Japan]

Synopsis: The lives of four thirty plus year old women in Kobe, Japan are changed when one of them, Jun (Rira Kawamura), admits to have taken part in an adulterous affair and is about to good through divorce court.

Into the 21st century, cinema's constant evolutions challenge the perceptions of what cinema is meant to be. Unfortunate this leads to biases and ill advised tangents which go both ways. One way is to presume the new way is the best when they should co-exist as much as possible - found when cellioud film is still used for certain productions and archival purposes when there was talk of digital taking over, as has been the fact the promotion of 3D cinema has declined immensely after the push into the 2010s, a medium worthy preserving if just to see the films made within its various past lives as they were intended. The other way is preconceptions which undercut only the most boring of views of cinema: that animation is only for children; that no one watches black-and-white or foreign films; that cinema (to take another side) must be respectable and not be grungy genre work; that, in this particular example, films should only be two hours maximum unless award season productions and (inexplicably) superhero blockbuster, this rule dictated as much by cinemas wanting to show a film as many times in a day as possible for profit as it is the belief the human bladder couldn't take it.

There have been films in the past that pushed this rule. Technically Jacques Rivette's legendary Out 1 (1971) was originally meant for television, at 12 hours 53 minutes, but Béla Tarr's Satantango (1994) (7 hours 30 minutes) to far less known works like Joris Ivens' documentary How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1976) (12 hours 43 minutes) definitely were meant for cinema. Even Hollywood itself has made long three plus hour epics in their golden eras, and even outside the USA you have Bernardo Bertolucci's five hour plus epic 1900 (1976) among other examples in world cinema. Digital filmmaking however, returning back to it beyond of off-the-cuff reference, or at least the advancements in economical use of film making equipment has allowed individuals to push the lengths of films further, Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz the best example of this as he clearly belieies he cannot tell his country's pass without at least usually breaking the 200-300 minutes length with a few brisker exceptions.

They are films which undermine the traditional notions of viewing, forcing one to have to view a film as a day's single experience depending on length and forcing a commitment. Wisely even in cinemas, with the exception of Andy Warhol who had no issue at all with people walking in and out (or interacting) in the midst of his epic film experiments, intervals are a necessary and part of their dialogue. Unfortunately these films are marginalised as being entirely indigestible to mainstream or even mainstream art house cinema, ironic considering Bollywood cinema (usually pushing the three hour mark even with light entertainment) from India lionises a film as being an experience and superhero films (as mentioned) are pushing the three hour mark usually reserved for historical dramas.

The epic film is a gamble, but the risk can prove worthwhile if, now with the slither of hope that (even if temporarily) you can watch them at home split into pieces, such a film when actually available able to use the extreme lengths for incredible depth when you willingly plunge into their time frames. One such film, at five hours plus, is Ryūsuke Hamaguchi's Happy Hour which, with the exception of a book reading/Q&A sequence after four hours in, never feels like an experiment film of endurance but actually passes in time with a surprising briskness. It's instead of an accessible, thoughtful drama about women which just happens to use this momentous length to draw this narrative of four women, including their subplots, out in fully fleshed form, closer to a novel in structure than a filmic visualscape.

It contrasts the origins, suggesting an experiment, where Ryusuke Hamaguchi created the film through a workshop and amateur thespians, the remarkable thing being how it feels a superior dramatic work as a result of this practical work shopping, breathed through a felt, carefully considered structure. One catalyst starts an actual plot - Jun entering divorce proceedings with her cold scientist husband Kohei (Yoshitaka Zahana) - but it happens to exist in a film with much space before and after alongside following the worlds of her three female friends too, all with characters in their own lives who have stories.

Fumi (Maiko Mihara), a manager of non-profit art spaces responsible for the bookends of the film of the workshop and the Q&A that play out as the longest chapters, realises her marriage is not truly peaceful, a subplot within a subplot that of her husband's interactions with a female novelist he is working having more to it than a professional relationship. Akari (Sachie Tanaka), a headstrong nurse whose friendship with Jun is betrayed by learning of her adulterous fling, whose criticisms of a young female nurse for mistakes turn on herself when a freak mishap in the final hours of the story lead to her breaking her leg. And Sakurako (Hazuki Kikuchi), who as the conventional housewife the four women, despite an understanding mother-in-law, has to deal both with the frosty relationship with her own husband and also her son's romantic yearnings leading to a girl becoming pregnant. The length of Happy Hour is thus, like the aforementioned novel, from fleshing out these plot threads into a rich and vibrant web, played matter-of-factly over its length without deliberate obfuscation or pausing in length in meditation.

 Its length also plays a game in undercutting the viewer's perceptions by swimming the psychological depths of the characters. Ukai (Shuhei Shibata), a New Age-like guide, starts off as a nice if eccentric figure found balancing objects on a beach and now, despite the strangeness of his workshop ideas, manages to at least open up the participants to speak more freely through his mix of bonding exercises; by the end of the film he's opened up from his layers to show a sinister lounge lizard especially when he follows Akari, a figure trying to seduce women even if it means kicking a person's crutches away. In contrast Jun's husband Kohei comes off as a cold robot of a man originally, detestable especially as the divorce court sequence is an agonising series of a woman being embarrassed by the judicial system's lack of empathy and focus on cold facts; tragedy is found as, becoming an improvised host of the Q&A, Kohei is shown capable in his own way of being anopen man but found it too late, as Jun's friends chastise him for this late discovery and especially as Jun herself vanishes through the film in the narrative's elaborate plotting. This level of character depth is usually to be found in visual shorthand or economic skill by the best in cinema; Ryusuke Hamaguchi instead lets it be told as much and fully as possible, itself a success too and a rarity in a medium usually now seen as a protracted, disappointing fireworks display by mainstream cinema.

 Only at two times in Happy Hour does it feel like a deliberate challenge due to its length, for the workshop and Q&A sequences. The workshop, which lasts over thirty minutes, is early in the film preparing you for what to expect, including the post workshop bar scene that starts the drama properly, experienced as an energetic build up of key characters alongside slowly reaching a crescendo when Jun confesses her adultery through a carefully considered pace in terms of the time and amount dialogue beforehand to reach it. The Q&A, including the female author reading her work before, does become something that'll test the patience of some audience members, a sense to whether it is deliberate on Hamaguchi's part to stretch of time here emphasised with moments of the audience shuffling in their seats and characters in their own stories at the same time. It's the only moment where the middle class, artistically minded nature of some of the characters really stand out, potentially testing just for how the story being read of potential romance at a bathing resort is entirely subjective itself, a work in its own way is elusive and tense in its slowness as the words are spoken about microscopic detail. Considering that it's so late into a film that's already passed four hours by this point, before the sense of length is felt here, I cannot judge a film which has managed to succeed over that length, even if I had to split it into usually two hour pieces, the kind of casually told drama found here not just in Japanese cinema but East Asian cinema in general (like Edward Yang's Yi Yi (2000)), only longer in length.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi as a visual filmmaker is definitely a sedate one, preferring his long takes with a still camera immensely. He's at an advantage that set within Kobe with stretches among the countryside, Japan aesthetically in its modern and period settings has always been one of the most distinct in any type of cinema. This applies to many countries when one opens your eyes to so much cinema you can tract a country's idiosyncrasies, but even a back alley and conventional public buildings (baring my own pet obsessions) have a distinction in Japanese cinema over others, something with the way they are shot even no budget splatter films having an aesthetic charm over their Western counterparts.

Altogether, Happy Hour succeeded - at the 2015 Locarno film festival it gained a special mention but more so won the award for Best Actress rightly shared between all four leads. Not for a film even remotely as mannered in its naturalism as a Yasujirō Ozu, the archetype of Japanese dramatic cinema, but still with the matter-of-factness of ordinary life visible and embraced. Even if it has a more overt plot eventually, all the intrigue and darkness is casually brought in within one which defiantly has humour against the darkness, and comes to it all casually, many scenes over food and drink in languid conversation and one moment undercutting any sinister intentions of Ukai's when a woman with a broken leg gets held aloof by the patrons of a dance floor in an euphoric crowd surfing moment. Of course a huge point with the film is, whilst it has prominent male characters, it is an entire female driven narrative and, rather than just merely ticking a check list of having two female characters having a conversation, it's an actual feminist (or frankly humane) story of women who bond, become divided, aren't perfect but fully fleshed out in what makes each of them up. Enough time over five hours and with the right cast, including non-actors from the workshop the film came from, is spent to make everyone (even minor characters like the authoress) have a soul onscreen. That itself makes Happy Hour a relief and it does so as if as easy as taking an actual gulp of air.

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