Happy Hour

Filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Happy Hour is a five-hour-plus intimate epic, a tale of interpersonal relationships probed so deliberately and with such quiet intensity that the joy and pain become almost palpable. The focus is on four thirtysomething women friends in Kobe, three of whom are married: Jun (Rira Kawamura), who brought the group together; Sakurako (Hazuki Kikuchi), a homebody oppressed by her live-in mother-in-law; and Fumi (Maiko Mihara), who manages a nonprofit arts venue. The fourth, Akari (Sachie Tanaka), is a divorcée devoted to her nursing job. Their camaraderie is challenged when Jun announces her intention to divorce her husband, an emotionally cold scientist, and then decides to leave without telling anyone where she is going. Her departure has a ripple effect on Sakurako and Fumi, who also think seriously about ending their unfulfilling marriages. This central plot thread has melodramatic overtones that become more apparent in the final two hours, but along the way Hamaguchi reveals the inner lives of these women (and those around them) through extended conversations and prolonged set-pieces, including a therapy workshop (that runs on for nearly an hour), a courtroom scene in which Jun testifies about her misery, and a literary reading at Fumi's hall by a young writer Fumi suspects is sleeping with her husband. Some viewers will find Happy Hour much too slow, but those willing to surrender to its unhurried pace may be deeply moved. Recommended. (F. Swietek)