Director Junta Yamaguchi and writer Makoto Ueda's follow up to their delightful Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes doesn't stray too far from their first film together. This time around they focus on a sleepy town that gets trapped in a two-minute time loop - think Groundhog day, but with an ensemble cast in Bill Murray's situation. And the short length of the loop makes a huge difference, too.
The film is anchored around the staff and guests at a traditional country inn (a ryokan, if that means anything to you) - specifically Mikoto (Riko Fujitani), who works there as a maid - as they start adjusting to their new bizarre reality. As soon as the two minutes are up, they get sent back to whatever they were doing at the start of the loop - physically reset, but with their memories left untouched; Mikoto goes back to standing by the river that runs behind the inn, for example, while a guest always finds himself in the bath (and for the first few loops is seen running around half-naked).
Hilariously, after they get a handle on what's happening, the staff decide to keep running the inn to the best of their ability and make their guests' stay as pleasant as possible given the circumstances; As far the owner sees it, the inn's weathered snowstorms and floods, so a time loop is just a new challenge that they need to face together.
As you'd expect from the creative team behind it, River is exceedingly clever in both form and content. It is a much more cinematic film than Beyond..., with some nice cinematography (courtesy of Kazunari Kawagoe) to go with its sometimes manic handheld shots, and it mimics the script's time loops by having the film consist of a string of two-minute one-take-scenes*. For a while it even matches each side of the edit between the scenes by shooting Makoto in the same position, from the same angle as the locations switch.
Ueda's script expertly adds complications as it goes along, and paces the introduction of new characters with the clever (and very cute) conceit that people who were doing a monotonous action (like eating rice) take longer to realize what's going on before they go out looking for an explanation.
Because the premise is much simpler than on Ueda's previous script, this one finds much more time for comedy: a full-on farce as the already freaked-out staff has to deal with their even more freaked-out customers, a gentle romantic story between Mikoto and a co-worker boyfriend (Yuki Torigoe) who is about to move out to France, and even some very, very slight and quickly dispelled darkness as a couple of the locals experiment with death.
There's a sweet theme in that some of the characters feel like they are at fault for causing the time loop - the sense that time is leaving them behind, and a staunch refusal to let anything get too heavy; There's no situation that can't be resolved by talking it over. It's both cute and very cutesy, if that makes sense. A cosy movie. That sort of thing often repels me badly, but I liked this one well enough.
The two-minute length of the loop is a genius touch: it's just enough time for people to get together and start working towards something just before the loop ends, and the movie mines a lot of laughs from the exasperation of people getting interrupted by it before they go back to whatever it was that they were doing.
It does get a little histrionic, repeatedly providing the harried staff with bite-sized crises that fit the loops' durations a little too neatly, but there's enough variety to the situations and a sense of progression that it never really hurts the movie.
Familiarity is a little bit of a problem. The film shares a lot of the crew with Beyond..., and there are a lot of shared plot elements as well; the way people adapt to their situation is carried over, as is their willingness to start playing around with the new rules of their reality. The ending is... well, I'm not a fan of the direction they took with it, but it's satisfying in that it gives everyone something to work towards together, and it suggests that both movies might exist in the same universe somehow.
There are also some issues that the script fails to explain. At one point it begins snowing, which the characters do address, but later when the snow is gone no one comments on it. Easily understandable given a budget film's usual constrained shooting schedule, I guess. Less forgivable are a couple of chase scenes where the hunters give their quarries a ridiculous amount of lead time. A few of the scenes are also very improv-theater like, with conversations where both characters oversell their lines a little too hard.
Overall, though, it's pretty funny and extremely likeable, if a bit lightweight. It's been a good few years for Groundhog-Day-alikes, what with Palm Springs, Boss Level and Happy Death Day; This one's the cleverest out of all of them, but also the one that has the least impact. Still a great way to spend two minutes over and over and over again.
*: I didn't time them because I reasoned "why wouldn't they do it that way?" However, a few of the scenes do feel shorter; If I ever rewatch it I'll come back and comment whether the movie follows its own rules or not.
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