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Worth it. It's long but you don't have to watch it all at once. It's a unique movie that foregrounds the slow details and nuances of the moments we experience. I think it expresses subtle, wordless feelings of magic and also anguish in searching for oneself and for fulfillment in our long (but short) lives.

I didn't always agree with the women in the movie but I related to how they were questioning the surface of themselves and their lives, searching for something more than what they'd fallen into or were told to be. The movie is humorous at times, depressing at times, and both. It left me with a feeling of silent reflection on the many sides to life and to people.

If you are willing to dedicate 5 hours of your time to watch Hamaguchi's Happy Hour, what you'll find is a cozy yet mildly depressing film perfect for those lonely, chilly winter nights alone.

The film strives to present themes about marriage, divorce, mid-life, relationships, love, and others in an extremely objective way. The dialogue in the café scene even explicitly states this, also inputting that while you can try to be objective, you are ultimately limited by your own experiences. How do you reach this hyper-realism? For one thing you can practically reduce editing to a minimum. The most stand out result of this is not cutting scenes out to pad out the run time. Even I, a person who loves this trend of extending run time in movies, had to split my viewing into 2-parts. However, this luxury of time gives the pacing a very natural feel; characters evolve very logically while not feeling rushed and long scenes of literally just shots of character's faces lets the audience see character's feelings change (or sometimes lack thereof) while not seeming abrupt at all. Another point is how the characters perform. The very amateurish quality in performance is reminiscent of films like Hong Sangsoo, a Korean director well known worldwide for his amateur style. The delivery of dialogue is very flat and relaxed, with only slight changes in intonation and volume for those extremely "dramatic" scenes. Characters display emotion with only subtle changes in facial expressions, or sometimes if they are sad, the director only presents them in the aftermath with their bloodshot eyes.

On the topic of dialogue, this film does suffer from some expository dialogue, a quality in a lot of French New Wave films that turns me off most of the time. I wish that in the 5-hour run time, Hamaguchi could have found more natural and normal ways of delivering dialogue.

How the film is presented is gorgeous. From watching some Ozu films, shot composition is very Japanese, a lot of intersecting lines into horizons and such. Color selection and camera positioning makes the film seem very disconnected from the characters, again contributing to the omniscient perspective of the film. And Kobe just seems like a pretty place to be. I especially loved the singles where the camera is placed right in front of the camera, like a Deacons/Cohen Brothers film making us intimate with the character while their cold expressions still leave a veil between us.

Overall, I think those who are willing to be active watchers for the 5-hour run time can get something out of watching this film, whether if it's about your marriage or if you happen to agree with these other reviews and find that women are evil (?). I personally thought that the main characters felt trapped by the societal pressures of mid-life (marriage, children, love) and that their actions to break out of those chains were out of their intolerance to be stuck in their societal roles as housewives. But the director's purposeful strategy of "present-how-it-is" kind of gives everyone the right to form and support their own ideals based on this film.

This movie focuses on 4 Japanese women in their late thirties. We follow their daily lives and their personal journeys. These 4 friends realize that they are unhappy with their (love) lives and they try to take back control. Several interesting topics are addressed, such as the lack of communication in relationships, the emancipation of women and the quest for self-fulfillment. The 4 non professional actresses give good performances and we get attached to their characters. Being immersed in the Japanese culture is also an enlightening experience. However, the movie is long. Some cuts could have been made.

Through 4 different characters, the movie make us share the life of today Japan, and the legitimate questions you can encounter in your couple. Necessarily slow, it is a good movie to make us think about our life. True and accurate insight in the woman soul. To be watched in a quiet place.

I'll admit my attention often drifted in the first quarter (lingering shots) but by the last hour I was thoroughly engaged - I even wanted to spend a little longer in everyone's company. Like walking back home from your friend's house after a great night, and the subsequent emptiness. I saw fragments of myself in Jun's husband and it terrified me. Kobe looks beautiful!

Binged this 317-minute realistic drama about four female friends who come to grips with their feelings of doubt and disappointment as they enter middle age, in particular with the relational shortcomings of men. The slow, detailed narrative, with its prolonged scenes and interwoven story lines around a centering drama and unique structural elegance, mesmerized me. This is rare, meaty fare far afield from the happily-ever-after screenplays that are all too common among Japanese movies, at least the ones I've watched heretofore on Amazon Prime.

Giving a feeling of Bergman meets Romer, this movie is very intimate, and quietly leaves deep traces for long after seeing it. About the ambiguity of love, power of friendship, transformation and intimacy, an emotional journey.

We get to know these characters so intimately, we feel they are our friends and at the same time strangers we discover more and more. The 5 hours 17 mins are perfect and every minute worthwhile. I would even love to continue another 5 more hours and continue to see these interesting lives unfold.

It is my first Ryûsuke Hamaguchi film and surely not the last. His incorporation of art and amazing stories into the narrative with vignettes of every day contemplation mixed with big events and poignant scenes are masterful. A few standout scenes are:

A life-affirming course by an artist A writer reading a short story and sublime Q&A A stranger in the bus talking about her father An estranged wife unwelcoming her husband into her temporary home A couple dealing with their son's transgression A nurse scolding a younger nurse about life and death A woman talking to the sister of the man she likes about sex and love

At the center, there are often friends around a table with sublime dialog and lowkey acting. The nonverbal interactions are extremely effective at conveying intrigue, tension and sympathy. We understand the complicated lives of these four women and the people around them in great detail with non-judgmental equanimity. The story is poetic like Edward Yang's "Yi Yi", but not as funny. It also reminds me of Chang-dong Lee's "Poetry". It is however very much its own film and with its on pace and universe.

At times, it shows a somewhat bleak reality of failing relationships and discovery but with so much insight and artistic enhancement. A masterpiece in all aspects that never feels forced, by always allowing introspection and growth, and showing the complexity of life and people. It invites us to observe, it expands our boundaries slowly, it questions and reflects. The moving parts are so well woven together, and the attentive viewer never misses a beat or gets bored. We are there with the characters and events, at the table with them, in their homes or in vacation, at the tumultuous crucial reading and its aftermaths.

A movie that redefines movie-making in its impeccable vision and visceral journey.

There are various films whose run-times are much longer than what is considered normal. Lawrence Of Arabia clocked in at 397 minutes. The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King was over 200 minutes long. More recently Blade Runner 2049 clocked in at a 'mere' 164 minutes. Japanese cinema has had its share of longer movies too. The epic Seven Samurai was 207 minutes long, while Love Exposure stopped looking up just shy of the four-hour mark. Happy Hour, ironically given the title, clocks in at five hours and seventeen minutes. Even more irony is supplied courtesy of the 'happy' aspect of things. More on that later.

What the five hours length offers the viewer is a film that has the space, at what seems like the natural tempo of life, to dwell on the details, subtleties, nuances; delve into the minutiae and the corners of lives of the four female characters. They comprise the portrayals director Hamaguchi Ryûsuke intends his film, and its novice actresses, to deliver. The film is set in Kobe, Japan and makes all women look seamlessly bad. The director sets out to show not one woman as honourable or decent. When the four women run into other females the latter too end up accusatory, suspicious, corrupt and rotten. That over five hours was needed is in part because so much realism is portrayed and in part because the film aims to not be a mere movie, but to act like an unglamorous eye on the perfidy of the modern woman abusing her freedom with abandon. The realism is accentuated because the actresses are all from the director's acting workshops - none of them have any other acting credit to her name - which means their relative amateurism and occasional awkwardness makes their corruption come across as even more genuine. Even on the unintentionally rare occasion that the camera is out of focus and blurry or a fly spontaneously lands and re-lands on a character's head it ends up giving the movie even more authenticity as it helps the proceedings appear true-to-life. The same, one imagines, is true with the film going on for so long that the actors forget they are on film, forget the camera and just relax and become themselves.

A segment of contemporary Japanese films (Kamome Shokodu, Megane, Petaru Dansu, Tokyo Sora as examples) has garnered accusations of catering to the desexualisation of Japanese women who are accorded a distant and sometimes demented quality. In films like these men are incidental and, when present at all, merely there as inane plot device creatures who help the women and immediately revert to disposability. These women's newfound independence has not enhanced them with love, understanding, happiness or contentment, but unleashed a beast that is morally rudderless, yet unwilling to assume ownership. In these films, the woman is deliberately indifferent to everything except her declared impossible standards. Happy Hour takes the concept to the next level. Men are not incidental. Men are victimized and suffering at the hands of not indifferent, but outright cruel and unhinged malicious female characters who not only not see it that way, they actually believe the opposite is true. Of the four females, one is married, one is divorcing, one is already divorced and the other in flux. Each is in turn abusive towards her man to the extent that in the second half of the film the viewer is treated to evidence of despicable and duplicitous deeds by women whose selfishness is projected through extraordinary demands, insults, psychological demasculinization and actions. Not only the women behave as such, but worse they imagine themselves as the victims. Ironically, they are more accommodating to men who are not physically or psychologically protective of them. One's family, vows, norms - even female friends - and propriety be damned. These women are uniformly hostile and self-absorbed jerks to such an extent that in comparison a fifth woman who characterizes her father's protectiveness towards her as a child as the work of a serial liar and a sixth woman who expresses her love and lust to a married man - right after a dinner with the said man's wife - are the more decent ones. There has been some thought given recently that in contrast to conventional wisdom Japan is a matriarchy. This is not the place for that debate, but in Happy Hour the demanding four use accusatory language to reveal surreal selfishness. It is unfathomable how they do not communicate their outlandish wants, yet demand understanding. They receive love, loyalty, patience and material goods, yet none of it helps tether them to husband or child, feeling or logic. It is a straight road to wanton matrimonial and societal hell.

Irony has come up a few times in this text. In addition, it is ironic that there is little 'happy' (the title stems from a lengthy and revealing café scene after a workshop where the characters are encouraged to find their centres and communicate, the latter of which the viewer must by this point in this text know is useless) in this film other than the brief times the four women find themselves away from home, responsibility or committed male companionship. What the viewer gets in lieu, however, is something original, something curious, something novel, but never uplifting or inspiring.

During one seemingly throw-away shot we are treated to a view of the city from the above inclusive of its streets, alleys, houses and yards. We come away wondering at the misery that lies within especially now that we know all the normal tools of human affection, logic or persuasion have lost their efficacy.

This starts out as a really interesting movie about four Japanese 30ish women and how they (mis)manage their lives and the lives of those around them in search of things we are never quite sure of. The film is very good at bringing you close to their world, but keeping you at arms length at the same time, and the characters take turns in being more or less likeable/relatable, but often come off as aliens floating through contemporary Japanese society and trying to communicate (or not- "communication" is the key theme). I don't know the reality of said society, but I have met enough alienated and unhappy people in my own to suggest it rings true, specific cultural issues non-withstanding. That part of the movie was fascinating, including insights into family, divorce, relationships, honor, etc. But the issue is not really the five-hour length, probably used to suggest the real-life unwinding of issues; although it doesn't help. For me the main problem was the long expository conversations/monologues, the many side stories and secondary characters popping in and out, the serious issues that come up with no background (that they have often no resolution is fine by me), and the fact the the actors often seem more part of an acting experiment using amateurs, than players in a movie, which actually seems to be the case. Most actors do a fine job (some are more wooden), but it does feel like an exercise. As a "completist" that watches all movies to the end on principle, I nevertheless felt I would have gotten the same messages by watching any 90-120 minutes of the whole length.

What a surprising triumph! This film is such a delicate examination of private lives, every day happening, presented in a quite and nonchalant way. Highly recommended.

This movie resonates with people world wide. From generation to generation we inherit unhealthy relationship standards and expectations. There are many things in this movie. Patriarchy and what it means. Work standards that create family problems. Expectations where people are not willing to accept the reality of their partners.

It is also a strong observant movie of real woman today that makes it so resonating also with many western audiences.

Great dialogues, great people who make you reflect and be appreciative.

Yes the film is long and requires a commitment (less so streaming or like myself via a library DVD). I thought it was immensely worth it, you develop a strong sense of the four lead characters, characters that might be glossed over in other films (if not Japanese society?!?)

At times, I think the filmmaker indulges in long scenes, there is a sort of self-help meets yoga class that in many other films would have been cut to 3 mins, but here it must have been 30 mins and did feel interminable at times as a viewer, as it might have felt if I unfortunately had attended one. It built tension for the scene afterwards where more relaxed conversation takes place, and yet not without its own edginess.

Later there is a book reading that feels the same way but builds up opposing forces for a post-reading interview. The length of time spent on these scenes, helps put you into actresses lives.

That said, the real immersion comes with some of the dialog between just the actresses. That sharp juxtaposition of civil surface but biting truth beneath it, was pretty fascinating to me.

But mostly, I think of scenes of the women usually alone in some form of transportation, where they do leave some aspect of themselves behind. Boat, subway and especially that scene with Rira Kawamura as Jun on the bus after that interesting discussion with another passenger. Jun alone and the lighting exudes hope flashing across her, even as she is in isolation away from the quartet.

Any ways, the movie was moving for me. Even if like a long car trip, you find yourself wondering "are we there yet" the ride is really what it was all about.

I do like Hamaguchi's battle against the rushed jump-cut style of cinema.....and of life as well!

This is the story of a group of female friends and their romantic relationships and work lives. The word happy is in the title, but this is not a happy film, and it goes on for over 5 hours. Each of the main characters is struggling with relationship and work issues, and things grow progressively more dramatic as the story goes on. Jun is trying to get away from her obsessive husband, who refuses to let her leave him, and in Japan a husband has some legal rights in this area. Fumi has to deal with what might be a romantic rival to her husband, a thoughtful writer. Sakurako lives with her husband, son, and mother-in-law in what appears to be a loveless home. And Akari, the tough one of the group, is lonely and emotionally isolated.

There is a lot of loneliness in this film, and it seems like an indictment of Japanese marriages, portraying them as cold and heartless arrangements that are unfulfilling for all concerned. It reminded me of the films of Eric Rohmer, in the way it seriously probed its characters' relationships and emotions. There are long, puzzling sequences, like the odd workshop that takes place near the beginning. It was cool to see Hamaguchi breaking all the rules of mainstream filmmaking by having his characters talk at length about their feelings, and behave in realistic, undramatic ways. This is a serious film that got me thinking about the characters and their lives.

I don't know, maybe I just wanted to like this and so I liked it. The 6 hours long Japanese not so very well know movie...it's an appealing etiquette, no?

But I truly liked. It made me think of a bunch of things first of which is: slow can be fast. If it's deep enough, you have plenty to see.

And this movie is long and slow but it's so filled with authentic human emotions (or what looks like that) I was captured, especially during the first half.

This movie talks about four women more or less and I was the fifth, that's how I felt sometimes. To connect this deeply with some characters, it's kind of amazing.

Subtle, delicate, intimate, nostalgic, melancholic: I don't know if everyone would enjoy this, maybe you could find it frustrating but MAYBE if you just take it in, then you'll like this. Don't rush it, throw away your expectations etc etc. Good luck.

I think so given that we binge watch series of this length, I would say so. I did it in 3 sittings and didn't feel I had lost any continuity. Director Hamaguchi is clearly a devotee of kindaigeki films from the likes of Ozu and Naruse.

This is brought up to date and centres on four women friends and the struggles they have with each other and in a weirdly connected way to their husbands (only one is single and must look at the others who all seem unhappily married).

The film is really about 4 women in their 30s questioning their lives and relationships. We can all relate to that and in Japan where divorce is so traumatic it can be even more acute.

The filming is very good, using amateur actors who all felt natural and in a very quiet and unassuming way allowed you to get to know them. Set in Kobe, the film very cleverly weaves scenes of the women individually with connecting scenes of their interactions and those around them.

It is a slow build and while not an absolute classic is worth it.

I watched this movie in pieces over several days, in order to finish the 5+ hour run time. This allowed me to process what I watched during each time. The movie portrays how 4 Japanese women are dealing with each other and their personal lives. The conversations they had were interesting at some moments, but overall it magnified how they weren't able to communicate properly. Not with each other, and not with their husbands either. Each woman seemed listless and just floating through their lives, unhappy, and unsure what to do about it. But maybe that is the life and culture in Japan.