The Cinematheque

“A fascinating, towering confection of contradictions: a modest epic; a work that simultaneously resembles both contemporary television drama and art cinema at its airiest; a film you feel like you’ve seen before but that somehow never ceases to surprise. I suspect we’ll be talking about this one for some time to come.”

Dan Sullivan, Film Comment

A powerful affirmation of the immersive potential of cinema, Happy Hour is a slow-burning epic chronicling the emotional journey of four thirtysomething women in the misty seaside city of Kobe, Japan. As they navigate the unsteady currents of their work, domestic, and romantic lives, a sudden unexpected rift opens that propels each to a new, richer understanding of life and love. [Drive My Car] director Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s wise, precisely observed, compulsively watchable drama of friendship and midlife awakening runs over five hours, yet the leisurely duration is not an indulgence but a strategy that creates a novelistic space where everyday moments become charged with possibility. The result is a subtle, emotionally intense, and spectacularly complex rendering of the details of daily life in which ideas and feelings are swayed by the unseen forces of friendship and love and buffeted by the weight of deception, loyalty, and tradition. —Janus Films

In Japanese with English subtitles

Best Actress (Kawamura Rira, Kikuchi Hazuki, Mihara Maiko, and Tanaka Sachie)
Locarno 2015

“Extraordinary … Its length is entirely justified, indeed richly and deeply filled … Happy Hour, a work of distinctly modern cinema, reaches deep into the classic traditions of melodrama—along with its coincidences and its violent contrasts—to revive a latent power for grand-scale observation through painfully close contact with the agonizing intimacies of contemporary life.”

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“A monumental film [that] finds majesty in the mundane … A movie defined by an unshakeable belief that any encounter holds the promise of magic.”

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice