Sightlines · reception

How Happy Hour was received

2015 · Ryusuke Hamaguchi · Happy Hour on Sightlines

The arc

It premiered at Locarno in 2015 as a 317-minute curio from a barely-known Japanese director and screened mostly to festival diehards; after Drive My Car swept the world in 2021, cinephiles went back and crowned Happy Hour the secret masterpiece of Hamaguchi's filmography.

What’s debated

The eternal debate: is the five-hour-plus runtime essential or indulgent — with converts insisting it 'flies by' and that it's actually better than Drive My Car.

Its footprint

It's become the go-to exhibit in the 'long films that earn every minute' conversation — the movie people dare each other to start, then evangelize about once they've finished.

Where it stands

A canon climber and Letterboxd favorite — the deep cut that signals you've gone beyond Drive My Car into full Hamaguchi devotion.

Did you know? The four lead actresses were non-professionals drawn from an acting workshop Hamaguchi ran in Kobe, and they jointly won the Best Actress prize at the 2015 Locarno Film Festival.

Named by the director

• John Cassavetes — Hamaguchi, who wrote his graduate thesis on Cassavetes, has cited him as the key influence on Happy Hour's workshop-based, improvisation-rooted approach to performance.