Series Site
"When Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s Happy Hour, an over-five-hour-long drama about four middle-class thirtysomething Japanese women living in Kobe that at once managed to recall Rivette and seem like nothing anyone had seen before, made a splash on the film festival circuit in 2015, it seemed to many as though a massive talent had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Now, with the arrival Hamaguchi’s Asako I & II—a film every bit as accomplished and original, but a very different animal—confirming his importance, it’s a good time to look back and see where this thrilling new force has come from, to retrace the steps to his present eminence. With that in mind, Metrograph will be home to Hamaguchi’s first New York retrospective—an opportunity to catch up with one of the most exciting young careers in world cinema."—Metrograph