Pas une critique!

Vu sur la Médiathèque numérique, catalogue arteVOD (B.U.A).

Perfectly standard-fare romances, played between TVdrama typical characters with no real personality aside from their main trait. An intrigue, the enamoured wait for one's youth and its blind happiness to return (or if you prefer hormonal "love" vs. practical/habit love), you have already seen and read plenty of times. But it comes here with a mini-gimmick (the past flame and current partner are lookalikes).

The fact the film doesn't end up as average as the project all sounds is a proof of Hamaguchi's skills:
It goes through all the expected events yet manages to surprise by either delaying or rushing them*.
It offers digression while looking desperately linear.
The low style direction leaves unexpectedly place to "big scenes" (the first one being the fantasized first encounter, a more notable one being an earthquake).
The characters ― the overly cute and discret Asako, her teenage unstable first love or her cute & nice perfect fiance ― benefit from decent acting and a probably excellent direction to be as effective in their role as they are despite their lack of elaboration. (Pretty good title performance.)

«Gratefulness is not love.» ― The heroin's ancient friend / her lost youth.

The way it plays with the expectations it fulfills (obviously, the never-forgotten lover had to return and Asako to depart with him) has a downside: it's a film that keeps on not ending in its last half an hour. Every opportunity, it seems to embrace only to reject almost as soon, wich also pushes uselessly the duration.

Final good point: it goes with the expected little moral (from the beginning of the film by presenting the Baku segment as nothing but a teenage dream) but nevertheless leaves the viewer on more demoralizing (grey?) lines.

Score: 6?7/10
Enjoyment: 3/5
Does what it wants quite well, even if it's almost nothing. At least it didn't serve me the kind of ending that I could only despise as a "logical" watcher, unlike Rohmer.

*The "love" confessions and first romantic contacts in this film are so laughable their stupidity is immediately forgiven.