Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

A story can change a lot depending on who tells it. This week I’m looking at three new movies — from Japan, Taiwan and France — that retell their stories from different points of view. 

There’s a woman in a French village who disappears in a blizzard; another woman, in Taipei,  who wakes up to find a whole day is missing;  and a guy in Tokyo who finds he can talk to himself on a video monitor… two minutes in the future.

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (ドロステのはてで僕ら)

Dir: Yamaguchi Junta

It’s closing time in Tokyo. Kato (Tosa Kazunari) is an ordinary young man in his twenties who runs a small cafe and is in an amateur rock band with his friends. He also has a crush on Megumi (Asakura Aki), the woman next door, who he’s never had the nerve to approach. He rents a room upstairs in a 5-storey walk-up. But everything changes when he discovers he’s not alone in his room. Someone is talking to him through his computer screen from the monitor in the cafe downstairs. What’s really weird is he’s the one talking on the screen… but from two minutes in the future.

Huh…? 

He tests this by running back downstairs to the cafe and speaking into the monitor there. Sure enough, it’s him in his bedroom from two minutes in the past. A nifty trick perhaps, but what use is it? Well for one thing, maybe he can finally ask Megumi for a date? Soon his friends from the band drop by and are mesmerized by the phenomenon. They up the ante by bringing the upstairs screen down to the cafe, facing the other monitor. Now, the images are repeated endlessly on both screens; one into the past and the other into future, two minutes at a time, revealing secrets that no one should know.  Like an angry yakuza gangster who appears in the near future wielding a sharp knife. Can they right the wrongs and reset  time? Or have they permanently upset the cosmic space-time continuum?

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is a brilliantly-made, low-budget sci-fi comedy. It’s almost like a stage play, as the action rarely strays from the apartment and the cafe. It also manages to convey — credibly — the concept of time travel with virtually no special effects.

This movie is a lot of fun.

Only The Animals (Seules les bêtes)

Co-WriDir: Dominik Moll

Alice (Laure Calamy) is a married woman who lives in a tiny mountainous  French hamlet. She makes her rounds along cliffside roads to handle insurance claims for farmers who live there. She lives with her grumpy husband Michel (Denis Menochet) but is having a torrid affair with another farmer, Joseph (Damien Bonnard), a young reclusive farmer on a downward spiral since his mother died. She sees him once a week on her rounds. But everything changes when a rich woman, who lives in a rented stone house with her husband, disappears in a blizzard.

Turns out Evelyne (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) was having a fling with a beautiful young waitress, half her age, she met at a seaside resort.  Marion (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) is in love and follows her to her country home. But now Evelyne is gone. Is she dead or merely missing? And who is responsible — Alice, Michel, Joseph, Marion, or Evelyne herself…? Or perhaps someone else? (There’s a subplot involving a young man (Guy Roger ‘Bibisse’ N’Drin) who runs a catfish scheme out of Côte D’Ivoire.)

Only The Animals is an intriguing and actually quite moving  mysterious drama about a possible murder in a picturesque mountainside village. It’s gripping and shocking, without losing sympathy for any of the characters, no matter how bizarre or tragic some of them are. The mystery is gradually revealed as each scene is retold in chapters, Rashomon-style, from the point of view of each of the main characters. And each retelling reveals more about what happened before and after the scene — even though you’ve watched it already — explaining some of the characters’ seemingly erratic behaviour. This is a very cool look at the dysfunctional lives of a group of French farmers. 

My Missing Valentine (消失的情人節)

Wri/Dir: Chen Yu-Hsun

Yang Hsiao-chi (Patty Lee) is a young woman in her late twenties who leads an uneventful life. Originally from a small town, she works at a boring job in a local post office in Taipei, Taiwan. She sees the same people everyday, like the weirdo who buys one stamp to mail a letter, and an irate middle aged man who complains about everything. Her only friend is a faceless late-night radio host she listens to in her tiny rented room. Until… she meets a handsome prince who promises her the world. Not a prince exactly;  Liu Wen-sen (former HK fashion model and windsurfer Duncan Chow) is a dance-aerobics instructor in a local park with a day job in the blockchain industry. He’s rich, kind, generous and modest — raised an orphan he devotes his life to helping needy kids. And he likes Yang Hsiao-chi, who has never had a boyfriend before. Their big date will be on Valenitine’s day, the next day. Is this all too good to be true? Alas, she awakens the next morning to discover her new boyfriend has disappeared, and so has Valentine’s day: it’s been completely erased. What is going on?

This is where the second point of view enters the picture. We discover there’s another man who likes Hsiao-chi. Wu Kui-Tai  (Liu Kuan-ting) is  a local bus driver who sees her everyday. And he’s also the guy who stands in her line to buy a single stamp at the post office. And he knows exactly what happened to her during that missing day.

My Missing Valentine is sort of a romantic comedy, a rom-com, but its plot is so off the wall that it actually qualifies as a romantic fantasy or science fiction pic. Throw in a human lizard who lives in Hsiao-chi’s closet and you’ve got one of the weirdest romances you’ve probably ever seen. It’s very cute without being gushy and very entertaining to watch. 

My Missing Valentine and Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes are both playing at the Reel Asain Film Festival, which runs from November 10th-19th; Only The Animals opens this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com