Final Rating: 4/5
In Junta Yamaguchi’s second feature river, the inhabitants of a small inn in the Japanese countryside suddenly find themselves in a time loop, retaining their memories after each “lap”. But where many time loop stories operate on rules that allow the characters to experiment with long durations of each lap, or large sets to play around in, river restricts the loop to two minutes. The characters hardly have time to walk to the other side of the building – much less learn a new skill a la Bill Murray in Groundhog Day – before the world is reset to 1:56:20 PM.
With so little time for trial and error, the characters are quick to coordinate to work on stopping the loop. Yamaguchi sets out the relationships between the characters efficiently and gleefully explores the interactions that arise. The hotel staff are still duty-bound to tend to their guests, who have all gotten themselves into a series of unique predicaments. A novelist suffering from writer’s block can now no longer write without his work being undone; two guests conducting a business meeting over lunch are stuck in the final dregs of their hotpot forever; the novelist’s editor suddenly can’t leave the bath.
Each lap of the time loop is presented as a continuous two-minute take, usually centered on the character of Mikoto (Riko Fujitani). Mikoto starts each lap at the river behind the inn, so her first action is nearly always to walk backwards into the inn and meet someone either at the entrance or on the second floor.
As the camera follows Mikoto, the audience quickly becomes familiar with the layout of the inn, and later the entire town. The tangible set design makes the village itself into yet another character for the cast to interact with.
River creates not only a sense that it is happening in real time, but also that it’s happening in a real place, which lends an extra tension to later scenes in which Mikoto ventures significantly further than a room in the inn. If it takes almost two minutes to get around the whole inn, is there even time to go across the street? Across the river? Escape the village?
The Blu-Ray includes a full hour-long making-of documentary. In lieu of interviews with the cast and crew, the filmmakers let the behind-the-scenes footage speak for itself. It’s fun footage that highlights the passion of the filmmakers, but it provides little in the way of additional insights.
This stands in contrast to the other bonus feature: a seventeen-minute interview with director Yamaguchi. Hearing Yamaguchi speak about river is as delightful as it is insightful. Yamaguchi’s filmography includes two films, both of which involve time-travel, and both of which feature the theme of two minutes.
However, despite the similarities, Yamaguchi’s approach to each was remarkably different, and hearing him speak on the differences adds depth not only river, but also his previous film Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes. Where Beyond uses rigid logic to explore the prison of fate, River takes a softer approach to timing, turning its focus to the characters’ internality.
The context of what two minutes means to Yamaguchi illuminates themes of logic vs. emotion in both films. Mechanically, river is about a time-loop, but thematically, it explores the emotional toll that comes with being unable to move forward. A common trope in time-loop films requires a character to accomplish some impossible task or deal with some unfinished business for time to go back to normal. But if unfinished business is the reason for the loop, every character in river could be to blame.
You can read our original review of river from the 2023 Fantasia Film Festival.
Thank you to Third Window Films for the Blu-Ray. You can purchase river through Arrow Video.
