(Haru)

I recently saw, "Haru" (1996) and was surprised to have stayed with it. There were challenges - YouTube's very frequent commercial interruptions, and much of the "dialog" requiring the non-Japanese speaking viewer to read translations of multi-line email chats. The movie takes the viewer back to when the internet was new and by today's standards, terribly primitive, more than a decade before the smart phone. The characters use their desk top computers to converse over dial-up modems, when Instagram, Facebook, and even MySpace were still years away. "Haru" instead invites you back into its long ago, Wi-Fi-less, Alta Vista world.

All I can say is that I returned to the film after each commercial and never thought of leaving it. The characters had real, believable interactions, whether scrolling away online, or having in person encounters. For its different culture, language barrier, and now primitive technology, I was still far more involved watching "Haru" than when I sat through "You"ve Got Mail" (1998).

The offline aspect of "Haru"'s cinematography and sound serves up urban, street-level realism. I also found at least two peak moments worthy of any highlight reel of 1990's cinema. I won't give anything away but instead invite readers of this review to make their own discoveries of a strange, deeply involving, already old movie.