Thoughts on River

    On Tubi, I watched River, a 2023 Japanese sci-fi comedy directed by Junta Yamaguchi and written by Makoto Ueda. The film takes place in a old winter ryokan, or Japanese inn, in Kibune, outside of Kyoto. The lead character, the waitress Mikoto (Riko Fujitani), is standing by the Kibune river behind the ryokan, then goes back to work, cleaning up a table with the head waiter, but then finds herself back when she started at the river two minutes ago. She feels like this is deja vu, but when this happens for a third time, she and the waiter get confused, both experiencing the same feelings, and then the staff and guests, also being perplexed, realize that they are all stuck in a time loop that keeps repeating itself every two minutes. Their area is the only one affected, and as they are able to retain their memories and not have their mind reset every two minutes, they try to work together to solve the problem. 

    But as the resets keep happening, people start panicking, like two businessmen who are seated eating rice and getting sick of the rice and worrying they will eat it forever; a guest who was in the baths who keeps running out in just a towel with shampoo in his hair; and a novelist who is struggling with finishing his draft, at first welcoming the break but then becoming hysterical. 

    Each reset is filmed as one long take for two minutes, and the staff are frequently running up stairs and through corridors, or going to a separate inn building across the road, and given that they have such a short time before resetting, it's more stressful whenever someone figures out new information but wants everyone to meet in a particular place, where they may not have time to get there to hear everything before the loop happens again.

    I liked how this differed from other time loop films because it had more people stuck in the loop, as opposed to movies that usually have one or two people stuck in it and trying to figure things out and trying to act normal to others unaware of the loop. With everyone in the same predicament, and being able to remember things, it helps keep the story fresh by not repeating the same scene over and over again, with each scene being different based on the latest information they learned. The staff also still have to do their jobs and think of their guests, whether it's bringing in lukewarm sake to the businessmen because there wasn't enough time to make hot sake, or having the man in the baths coming out in a robe in the later scenes so he isn't half-naked in a towel around everyone.

    There is a romantic subplot between Mikoto and a young chef who are dating, and their story plays into Mikoto worrying that by her wishing by the river that it would stop flowing, like a way of stopping time, that she is responsible for the time loop, and she is trying to figure out a conflict with her boyfriend while also trying to end the loop. 

    It works well when everyone learns to be cooperative with each other and stops panicking, and the cause of the time loop circles back to a minor reference early on in the movie that pays off later in an interesting way. I heard of this movie from the Critically Acclaimed podcast, hosted by two film critics, William Bibbiani and Witney Siebold, and they did an episode in 2024 ranking the best 24-hour movies, for movies that take place within a day, and I thought this movie sounded really good, and luckily it was streaming on Tubi to watch. So I'm glad for their recommendation, this was a really interesting movie to watch.