Mellow

Showings

Roxie Theatre Sun, Feb 9, 2020 1:15 PM
Film Info
Director:Rikiya Imaizumi
Film Category:Narrative
Asian
Running Time:106 min.
Country:Japan
Premiere:US Premiere

Description

Like a venn diagram of O’Henry, Oscar Wilde, Eric Rohmer and Hong Sang-Soo, MELLOW is a quietly subversive comedy of manners.

 

A florist, a salon and a ramen shop are the eerily sedate settings for a tidy parable about young people navigating years of repressed desire, poignant miscommunications and evolving sexual identities in urban Japan. By turns cathartic and hilarious, it’s wince-inducing to watch these characters give themselves permission to feel.

 

MELLOW doubles down on its clear-the-air approach to conflict resolution in an extended comic sequence near the middle, and again when the climax takes a turn for the epistolary.