Happî awâ (2015)

Happî awâ: Directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. With Sachie Tanaka, Hazuki Kikuchi, Maiko Mihara, Rira Kawamura. A slow-burning epic chronicling the emotional journey of four thirty something women in the misty seaside city of Kobe.

“The longest Japanese marathon is u0026#39;Happy Houru0026#39;, a movie that runs for 5hrs and 10min. Small budget, no frills, non-professional actors, shot as basic as a soapie but with less make-up and without being a soapie despite the topic being 4 female friends, in their late 30s, navigating their male relationships.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThat it was so basic, and that I had patience, equated to it feeling as real life as a fiction could be. No tricks, no action, no melodramatics, just people going through life like we all do.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe only time I felt tested was when there was a boring book reading which was rammed home as boring by it being approx 10 minutes long with longer praise for the author. However, that tedium had purpose, resulting in an important pivot of realisation in the characters.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eLife is messy. Love is hard to define and few have it. Marriage mostly sucks. People cheat when they mean to and when they donu0026#39;t, for good and bad reasons. Life rolls on. If anything, the aim of the movie was for it to be a lesson in learning to roll with it and be open to learning about who we are, and how we relate to others.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eHighlights for me was seeing real Japan, daily life and its cultural politeness (which, like cheating, can be both good and bad). It was a beautiful and slow unwinding of pain.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFreedom is hard for adults. The unrelated-to-the-movie catch-22 is that it was impossible for any of us, as kids or teens, to imagine it as anything other than wonderful flight.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI canu0026#39;t recall watching a Japanese or Korean movie without rice being mentioned. They always make me hungry.”