Daigo Matsui has been directing films about youth for a decade now, some in a shot-on-the-fly style that reflects the scrappy energy of his teenage subjects. Examples include "Our Huff and Puff Journey” (2015), in which four girls journey from Fukuoka to Tokyo to see the band CreepHyp, and “Japanese Girls Never Die” (2016) in which a gang of girls roam around town at night terrorizing unsuspecting men.
Matsui’s latest film, “Just Remembering,” which won the audience award at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, is quite different in tone and theme. For one thing, its two principals — former dancer Teruo (Sosuke Ikematsu), who works as lighting technician for a theater company, and taxi driver Yo (Sairi Ito), who is a fan of Winona Ryder’s cabbie in the 1991 Jim Jarmusch film “Night on Earth” — are no longer kids or, as the film begins, lovers.
For another, the story is structured so that nearly all of the action occurs on July 26, Teruo's birthday, but in different years, adding a formal unity absent in Matsui's earlier films. Jarmusch did something similar in "Night on Earth," with five vignettes unfolding at the same time but in different time zones.
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