Super Happy Forever by Kohei Igarashi is a star-studded Japanese love story in reverse.
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by Alexa DalbySuper Happy Forever
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
It doesn’t start like a comedy. Sano (Hiroki Sano and his friend Miyata (Yoshinori Miyata), a nurse, return to the end-of-season Japanese seaside hotel where Sano’s beloved wife Nagi died suddenly recently, and where the two of them first met five years ago. Everything reminds him of her and he’s inconsolable. At first, it’s a study in Sano’s uncontrollable grief and erratic drunken behaviour: he also mysteriously tries to locate a lost red cap.
Then the film switches viewpoint to Nagi (Nairu Yamamoto) five years ago. She’s a bit of a manic pixie dream girl, but she is shown to also be a kind and generous person, especially to the Vietnamese chamber maid (Hoang Nhur Quynh).
When Nagi and Sano meet by chance, it’s love at first sight: they share the same tastes and sense of humour. They spend an evening together and have a late-night snack on instant noodles. The red cap was the first thing he bought her and it was lost. It’s a bit like a Japanese culture version of Before Sunrise and the portrayal of young love is kinda cute and charming. The second half explains everything that happened in the first half.
Directed and written by Kohei Igarashi, it turns out to be a nice, poignant film about love after all. The central characters are stars in their industries in Asia.
Super Happy Forever premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 28 August 2024. International representation is by Alibi.
