The second feature of director Junta Yamaguchi and writer Makoto Ueda, River centres on the Science Fiction conceit of a wrinkle in time, just as their hit debut feature, 2020’s Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, did. But while the earlier film was constrained by its tiny budget and running time of only 70 minutes, its success has allowed the team to expand their story and develop a far more complex set of interlocking tales set across the rooms of a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn at a shrine near Kyoto.

In truth, the Sci-Fi is little more than a convenient premise to set up the narrative constraint, the real meat of the film being the way a time loop forces the staff and guests of the inn to repeat their actions while being fully aware that they are trapped. The motor of the story is their collective attempt to work out what is going on and how to break out of the loop. Though the pressure of the situation leads to some melodrama, the chief accent of the film is comedy: both physical and verbal.

Where River differs from the grand-daddy of time loop films, Harold Ramis’s 1993 Groundhog Day, is in its lack of moralising and sentimentality. It also appreciates that for many of the participants – and not just the staff of the inn committed to smiling service of their often difficult guests – the repetitive nature of their predicament is a metaphor for the wider limitations of their lives and relationships. There is some soul-searching as they worry that their own selfish desires may have triggered the loop, but that merely sets us up for a more whimsical explanation and resolution.

“The best time-travel stories reward repeat viewings and to return to this meticulous film is to absorb the beautiful unbroken takes that comprise each two-minute repeat. River is a loop worth getting lost in.” Josh Slater-Williams, Sight and Sound.

“Junta Yamaguchi’s River plays with the conceit from various angles, and the result is oftentimes sweet, hilarious, and chaotic.” Mae Abdulaki, Screen Rant.