Super Happy Forever review – glowing love story in reverse with echoes of Before Sunrise
It's hard to see where the happy fits in, until the film flips back in time. In the same hotel five years ago, Sano first claps eyes on his wife Nagi (Nairu Yamamoto) in a chance meeting in the hotel lobby. Yamamoto gives the performance of the film as aspiring photographer Nagi: funny, scatty and earnest. She plays it so naturally, so true to life, that Nagi feels like someone you might have actually met. She and Sano wander around town, young and free: dancing in a club, eating instant noodles. There is a glow to these scenes, a bit like in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, which similarly bottles the heart-flutter moment of something clicking, flirtation that feels like more than flirting.
In essence it's a love story in reverse. In the part set five years earlier, director Kohei Igarashi's script becomes almost like a mystery, following the clues dropped like a trail of crumbs in the first part. (So that explains why he's so desperate to find the red cap!) A young Vietnamese chambermaid who works in the hotel plays an important role – and the point is gently made that she doesn't have the luxury of wafting around town for a day.
There is something in here about chance and fate, but the film is too natural, too intimate to go too heavy on themes. It is gentle, straightforward drama, beautifully acted and emotionally tuned in. Its message is obvious but true: things can be super happy, just not forever.
Super Happy Forever is on Mubi
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
On Country: Photography from Australia 2025
Images taken in the town of Humpty Doo, a rural outpost on Larrakia/Wulna country, where the artist foregrounds country as an active protagonist. Photograph: Liss Fenwick Surat translates from Sudanese Arabic as 'snapshots'. The photographer recreates photos that her parents brought with them to Australia from Sudan. Photograph: Atong Atem This image flips reality, showing the view of a reversed Australian structure and the impact of colonisation. Photograph: Michael Cook A shot from a series exploring Queensland's tourist seaside city, the Gold Coast, examining crime and intense urbanisation. Photograph: Ying Ang The Naabámi (thou shall/will see): Barangaroo (army of me) series uses colonial photographic methods to photograph matriarchs and future matriarchs of Indigenous communities. Photograph: Brenda L Croft A collaboration with Indigenous children from the remote community of Warakurna, who made their own props and costumes. Photograph: Tony Albert, David Charles and Kieran Lawson A cyanotpye print that shows Capemba Bumbarra – a flow of fresh water through country on the Queensland coast. Photograph: Louis Lim/Elisa Jane Carmichael and Sonja Carmichael A self-portrait using white ochre paint from the series Ritual and Ceremony. The artist's work focuses on regenerating cultural knowledge and ceremonial practice. Photograph: Maree Clarke The series Big Sky is a photographic survey of Australia's heartland – an attempt to dispel sentimental and outdated narratives about the 'outback'. Photograph: Adam Ferguson The artist draws on personal experience as an Indigenous Congolese artist, photographing members of Naarm/Melbourne's Africa diaspora. Photograph: wani toaishara Portraits taken in Lutruwita/Tasmania from the series Portrait of a Distant Land explore community and country. Photograph: Ricky Maynard The series Postcards from the Edge, tells the story of an artist through vintage Australian postcards that celebrate queer freedom. Photograph: The Huxleys A photo from a series examining the climate crisis through imagery of the artist's children. Photograph: Lisa Sorgini An image exploring queer intimacy in Melbourne. Photograph: J Davies A shot from a series highlighting the environmental impact of mining on country. Photograph: James Tylor This series communicates the sacredness of country and its infinite and unending connection with the artist and his community. Photograph: Robert Fielding The Kinchela Aboriginal boys training home was a site that received young boys from the Stolen Generations. The artist looks at the trauma of being displaced from country. Photograph: Tace Stevens
The Sun
5 hours ago
- The Sun
Massive American film star becomes favourite to be next Bond girl as she is pals with new 007 director
SCREEN star Sydney Sweeney is in line to be a Bond bombshell in the next 007 film. The franchise's new director Denis Villeneuve is a friend, and keen to cast the White Lotus and Euphoria actress, 27. 4 4 Sydney also has the backing of Jeff Bezos, boss of Amazon — which has creative control of the series. A movie source said: 'Sydney is the top name on the casting sheet for Bond. 'Denis believes she is hugely talented, as well as having an alluring appeal to younger generations, vital in modernising the franchise. 'They've hung out together a lot and he has admired her stratospheric rise. 'Plus Sydney has the quality of being athletic and able to perform physical scenes, as well as being feminine and following in the legacy of Bond girls.' She recently transformed her figure to play US boxer Christy Martin in a new biopic, lifting weights daily and kickboxing. Sydney was pictured last year chatting to Villeneuve, 57, and Bond girl Ana de Armas, 37, at the Toronto Film Festival. And last month she was a guest at Bezos's Venice wedding. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and James Norton are among the favourites to replace Daniel Craig — whose last film as Bond was 2021's No Time to Die. Sydney Sweeney stuns in elegant blue dress at glitzy UK premiere of her latest movie 4 4
Telegraph
10 hours ago
- Telegraph
Britain should be thanking Thatcher for the Oasis reunion
With the much-anticipated Live '25 reunion tour by a newly-peaceful Oasis spectacularly kicking off at Cardiff's Principality Stadium last weekend, there is an unlikely heroine linked to the Mancunians' meteoric success, the birth of Britpop and the 90s Cool Britannia movement which exploded in its wake. Labour's Tony Blair may have basked in the morning glory of Cool Britannia, hailing its protagonists in Downing Street in 1997 and riding the wave of a creative tsunami which saw music, art, fashion, film, the media, politics and football coalesce in an unimaginable way. Yet there is an improbable political figure who some might say deserves acclaim for the popular culture juggernaut which raced through Britain almost exactly 30 years ago. Step forward Margaret Hilda Thatcher. Thatcher and the Gallagher brothers may seem implausible bedfellows and Lady T may have exited her stage in 2013, but without one of her government's 1980's policies in particular, Britpop – and thus this momentous Oasis Live '25 tour – may have never birthed. The reunion is projected to gross £400m and takes Liam and Noel across Britain, to the Americas, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Working for The Sun in the 1990s and becoming editor of its show business column, Bizarre, I had a ringside seat for the group's – and the accompanying movement's – explosion onto the front pages. I witnessed the band's bombastic live shows from 1994 in London and via Tokyo, California, Oslo, Milan, Majorca and Exeter, but peaking at Manchester's Maine Road and Knebworth in 1996, around the time of The Sun's highest ever daily full-price sale of 4.78m, in March of that glorious year. Musical, media and technological landscapes have fractured so significantly over the past decades that I cannot envisage any British group hereafter emerging with such impact and cultural significance. But, according to leading figures from that era, the seeds for the Gallaghers' rise and resurrection may have been sown back in 1983, when Thatcher launched the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. The brainchild of her Chancellor Geoffrey Howe, its aim was to stimulate entrepreneurship, with the jobless rate standing north of 11 per cent. Recipients were provided with £40-a-week for up to a year and claimants needed to prove £1,000 in savings and to have been unemployed for at least eight weeks. The scheme supported 103,000 people annually at its peak, but received criticism from those who felt it was simply shielding true jobless figures. It is, however, credited with helping 325,000 people to become self-employed. But an unanticipated side effect of the policy was its stimulation of the creative sector with many key Cool Britannia figures taking advantage. One man the PM helped was somebody firmly on the other side of the political divide – Creation Records' Alan McGee, the man who discovered Oasis in 1993. He admits: 'Say what you like about Thatcher, may she rot in hell, but her enterprise allowance helped me and a lot of others who probably wouldn't want to put their hand up to it. It's what funded most people at Creation Records to begin with.' Young British Artist Tracey Emin, synonymous with Cool Britannia, thinks Thatcher should be credited for her role in the creative industries – and the artist's own career, insisting: 'How did I get here today? The Enterprise Allowance: thank you Margaret Thatcher. It was a really difficult time, but whatever Margaret Thatcher was or wasn't, she obviously did some things right. It was f---ing brilliant. You set up your own business and got a guaranteed income for a year. Life on the enterprise allowance was so much better than life on the dole. The majority of us were really grateful for every little bit we were given from the government.' Other Thatcher beneficiaries include Pulp's Jarvis Cocker, back at Number One in the album charts last month, Portishead, Chris Donald, the founder of Viz magazine, Julian Dunkerton of fashion label Superdry, and Turner Prize-winning artists Jeremy Deller and Rachel Whiteread, its first-ever female recipient. Another was Keith Jeffrey, who used the funds to establish Newcastle's legendary venue The Riverside where Kurt Cobain's Nirvana played their first ever non-US gig in October 1989. So, Thatcher brought grunge to Britain, too. Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder is adamant that Britpop and his role in the Madchester scene, which predated and inspired it, would not have happened without Maggie's Magic Money Tree, admitting: 'We probably wouldn't even be in a band if it wasn't for her, she started us up with the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. So when we was on it, it was guys setting up their shoe-selling business or people going into selling flowers and we was setting up a band. Because there was no jobs around at the time, you either went into crime or into making music.' When asked whether Thatcher saved him from jail, Shaun answered: 'I guess so.' Tory stalwart Lord David Willetts believes Thatcher would have been proud of her creative legacy: 'She liked the idea of get-up-and-go, encouraging entrepreneurialism. The benefits bill was surging so much that you could justify relatively modest schemes like this. I'm sure that's how it was sold to her. It wouldn't have been her taste in music, but she was a fan of anything that made Britain prominent. I'm sure she'd have found their politics juvenile, but as long as they didn't end up back on benefits, that was fine.' And Thatcher's successor John Major concurred: 'Success is economically good for our country. Ian McKellen's skills as an actor or Tracey Emin's as an artist, and so on. It's not only the great captains of industry or the politicians, or the big companies that build our national success. It's also the aggregate importance of individual effort that adds to the diversity, the culture of our country, and this our national economic well-being.' And the Oasis dates will certainly benefit a struggling UK economy with experts estimating they will generate £940 million in fan spending. According to research from Novuna Personal Finance, almost 1.4 million fans will spend an average of £682.80 per person on tickets, travel, food, drink, accommodation, and shopping. Most is expected to stay within local communities, with 57.9 per cent of the total spend – equivalent to £544.9 million – projected to flow directly into the economies of the four host cities – Cardiff, Manchester, London and Edinburgh. Fellow Mancunian Morrissey of The Smiths, an Oasis hero and influence, once sang about his dream of seeing Thatcher on a guillotine. But, according to the cast of Cool Britannia, the controversial leader helped fashion a musical and artistic legacy which will live forever and continues to stimulate the UK economy today.
