Time loop movies are all about finding the beauty in repetition; helping us understand our rhythms and routines, and find a way to think bigger. To evolve beyond what’s comfortable and familiar – to grow. So it seems only apt that Junta Yamaguchi and Makoto Ueda’s smartly-assembled new feature River, is itself a play on their own kind of familiar. Effectively a rerun of the team’s other time loop movie, 2020’s festival smash Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, River doesn’t so much build on that winning formula as it does simplify it, chasing soul over science-fiction, and ending up with something deeper, if a little too similar.
Sweeping long takes? Hyper-mobile camerawork? A chaotic farce with a hint of the fantastical? River does it all, again, often feeling just as much a quasi-sequel to Two Minutes, as it does a follow-up for Yamaguchi, Ueda and their troupe of actors. It’s a same-but-different approach that lets the team re-live plenty of the magic of their earlier micro budget marvel, certainly playing to their strengths, but also ultimately stifling their chances of emerging from the shadow of its success.
Doubling the cast and relocating to a gorgeous mountain inn in Kibune, Kyoto, River does start strong with a much bigger and more varied canvas to play with; a huge, sweeping hotel/spa filled with countless conflicts, covering everything from unrequited love, to a naked guest caught mid-shampoo. Although to counter, the concept this time is much more straightforward too, doing away with any Droste effect-focussed antics, for a straight time loop plot where the cast find themselves endlessly spiralling, repeating the same two minutes over and over. Able to retain their memories, but forever being reset back to the same spot, like a glitching video game.
At first, it’s Yamaguchi’s talents for staging farfetched comedy that shines most; naturally, the staff of the inn double down on their work, insisting that no time-looping nonsense is going to stop them from delivering five star service to their guests. But the deeper in we go, the more it’s Ueda’s writing that gives River its personality; shifting doe-eyed waitress Mikoto (Riko Fujitani) into the lead and chasing her doomed love-affair with a bellboy who’s only ever two minutes away from hopping a plane to Paris.
It’s in these swings that the micro-budget stretches furthest, Yamaguchi desperately unwinding cinematographer Kazunari Kawagoe’s loop-long steady cam takes as far as he can manage, before we’re pinged right back to the start again. The humble inn and the river that runs beside it becomes a playground for the cast, running up and down stairs, on and off balconies, over streams and in and out of cars. Much like Two Minutes, it’s an incredible technical achievement on an even grander scale and given the slightly more inflated run-time (a whole 90 minutes(!) up from a super-lean 70), we’re afforded an occasional moment of introspection too.
But then comes the final act and another hard sci-fi inspired wrap-up that seems at odds with the more mystic and soulful tone of the rest. Ueda’s script ties any loose ends up neatly, but the lean away from what made River distinct is frustrating. In the moment, it feels almost like a retcon; backing down from something more fantasy-flavoured that might’ve ironically actually allowed them to go beyond those otherwise infinite two minutes.
Yamaguchi and his team do achieve something very impressive with River; a second time-loop caper on the trot that’s both lovingly and ingeniously made, and completely engrossing, running off a very unique kind of madcap energy unparalleled elsewhere. What it’s not though, is an improvement on a formula they absolutely nailed with their first feature, and in keeping so close to the visual language and personality of that first film, River is never really afforded the chance to stand on its own two feet.
A repetition of a repetition that deserves a bolder final act, and a chance to expand its aspirations in the same way it does its technicals.
River was screened as part of Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2023
