Rent Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020)

What can you do in two minutes? Find out. - Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes review by Strovey

Coming from the same school as One Cut of the Dead, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, like that film does not tell an entirely original story but tells it in such a fresh and positive way you cannot help but enjoy yourself and get truly involved in this short snappy tale of Kato and his cadre of daft friends.

As I often say, budget is the true driver of imagination and invention and with a very small budget Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes uses this ‘hardship’ to its advantage, and goodness me how successful it was.

The film uses three cramped locations, a café, an upstairs apartment and another small office on the next floor up and the actors spend the majority of the lean, snappy, 70 minutes run time, traversing between these places.

Filmed mainly on iPhones and using other various versatile techniques it is to the credit of all involved that this is not noticeable. Yamaguchi the director further shows his creative chops by editing the mobile phone footage to look as if the entire film was made in one take. It was not and you can see a few joins but to point them out would be churlish, to say the least.

The actors had to complete their monologues to camera and then repeat the same dialogue to a video of themselves [in the future] repeating it word for word, with the same inflections and gestures. It is difficult to comprehend how they never went mad or gave up. But the hard work they put in pays off. All of the ridiculous shenanigans play out in an entertaining way. I was glued to the screen trying to figure out what was going to happen next.

The big conceit and ultimately question you must ask yourself is, if you know the future and see what you are going to do and then do that thing because you’ve seen yourself doing it, does the future control you? Are you caught in a hellish conundrum?

This film will resonant with people who have spent the last two years on video conferencing calls where lags in signals can result in seemingly similar timelapse situations. A great premise for the story, although it is based on a short film called The Howling from 2014.

The running time is as exactly as long as it needs to be, the story is fraught but always light and the main five characters are all different but believable characters with their own significant traits and are likable and fun. If you ask me to criticise, perhaps some of the acting shows the makers theatrical roots but once again this is being churlish and ungenerous.

I liked the film, the tale and the characters, it was wacky enough to be off the beaten track but not obscure or off-putting, and throughout its brief running-time it is infused with sweet, good-natured fun.

I recommend this film and if you feel you might not have time to watch a strange subtitled Japanese film, well I can happily say that not only is this good fun but it runs at a lean, efficient 70 minutes.

I eagerly look forward to further output