Sunset Sunrise (Yoshiyuki Kishi, 2024)
★★

The bloated, unwieldy nature of Yoshiyuki Kishi’s romantic comedy Sunset Sunrise belies its modest setting. When the pandemic creates an opportunity for remote work, zestful salaryman Shinsaku (Masaki Suda) seizes the chance for a sea change, relocating from Tokyo to Udahama, a small town on the north-eastern coast. There he meets a roster of kooky locals, most of whom regard him with suspicion before gradually warming to his charms (and he to theirs). Chief among them is his landlord and lover-to-be, Momoka (Mao Inoue), a kind but guarded council worker who, like many in the community, lost loved ones to the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the region a decade earlier.

The film treats this recent tragedy with solemn respect, as one might expect. By contrast, the even more recent pandemic is rendered harmless, serving only to engineer plot points and elicit chuckles. Shinsaku flippantly breaches self-isolation because he’s a keen fisherman, and fish can’t be caught indoors, while his initial encounter with Momoka presents a woman gripped by an obsessive concern for hygiene. Only when she later removes her face mask – allowing Shinsaku, at last, to see her for who she really is – does he begin to fall for her. These jabs at Covid anxieties, delivered from the safety of hindsight, strike a weird note in a film otherwise committed to promoting the virtues of neighbourly care.