Fantastic Fest 2021: "Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes" Is A Cute & Clever One-Take Sci-Fi Comedy
Junta Yamaguchi makes his directorial debut with Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes, a light and breezy 70-minute sci-fi comedy that proves you don’t need a big budget to make an amusing time-travel head trip. The film takes a basic plot and stretches it to the outer most extremes, delivering laughs and mind-boggling time loop antics along the way.
A cafe owner discovers that the TV in his cafe suddenly shows images from the future, but only two minutes into the future.
Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes is a clever, cutesy sci-fi comedy that brings a unique slant to an otherwise basic plot. It’s essentially a boy-meets-girl story, one of cinema’s oldest plot lines, but its cerebral sci-fi leaning transforms this simple narrative into a complex and intricate web of events that make for one entertaining ride. Imagine Michel Gondry directing Primer as a one-take meet cute, and you’re in Beyond’s ballpark.
The film follows a shy cafe owner and amateur musician named Kato who lacks the courage to go after the girl he crushes over, Megumi, the daughter of a barber who works next door. One night, while searching for a pick in his apartment above his cafe, Kato inexplicably appears on his bedroom’s computer and speaks to himself from two minutes into the future via the cafe’s TV below. Prompted to come downstairs by his future self so he can have the same conversation with himself two minutes into the past, this time loop phenomenon — later dubbed “Time TV” — sets Kato and his friends on a strange, convoluted collision course with destiny.
Made with a crowd-funded budget 6 million yen (roughly $55k USD) and shot entirely on an iPhone, writer Makoto Ueda and director Junta Yamaguchi manage to create the same bewilderingly layered time-travel spectacle as Christopher Nolan’s Tenet with only a fraction of the budget. The film is the first feature-length effort from Europe Kikaku, a popular theater troupe in Kyoto, Japan (of which Ueda and Yamaguchi are both members), but it hardly feels like first film; it’s narrowly focused, lean, and full of bravura.
Executed in one continuous long take with no visible cuts, Ueda and Yamaguchi continuously stretch their novel concept to mind-numbing heights, both in terms of narrative and technical craft. Its script and characters movements are neatly measured out in two-minute intervals that are impressively observed for its entirety, and they’re pushed to their furthest most boundaries when Kato’s friend Ozawa begins experimenting, resulting in a droste effect that distorts things even further, creating nested scenes that triple and quadruple our ragtag group.
Its recursive format breeds intriguing results but also serves as an Achilles heel. We’re forced to watch conversations unfold several times, with little deviations and breaks interspersed throughout. As much as this engrosses us into the film’s puzzling events, it loses a bit of its grip during these sections, but it’s also a testament to the performers abilities. Since everything is largely one unbroken take, the actors need to match their physicality, intonation, and conversation beats when transitioning from their past and future selves, and they do this seamlessly.
Aside from Aki Asakura (who plays Megumi), all of the cast comes from the Europe Kikaku troupe. Given that they’re primarily a theater-centric bunch, Yamaguchi’s one-take approach leverages their strengths and creates the feel of a very immersive cinematic play. It’s all expertly timed, well choreographed and blocked. Everything is precisely measured and constructed, yet continuously playful and naturalistic in tone, which makes some its bigger ideas more digestible. There’s not much emotional depth to the film’s proceedings or its characters, but it constantly builds momentum and eventually raises the stakes before winding down to an overly adorable, tidy fizzle.
There are mysteries left unsolved, but the kooky mind trip Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes creates is so breezy and enjoyable in its inventiveness that’s it’s hard to be mad. Despite its inherent repetitions (which may have you zoning out here and there), it showcases to an audiences just how much can be achieved in 120 seconds. You can feel the weight and occasional drag of the film’s unit of measure, but it’s always pretty astonishing to see just how much it’s able to squeeze in. We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on Ueda and Yamaguchi and eagerly await whatever they cook up next.
Recommendation: If you love inventive time travel films, definitely put Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes on your radar, and check it out once it’s released!
Rating: 3.5 temporal paradoxes outta 5.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!