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‘Super Happy Forever’ Review: Nostalgia Can’t Mend a Broken Heart In a Gentle Japanese Charmer

Kohei Igarashi's wistful Venice Days opener 'Super Happy Forever' sees a young widower returning to the beach resort where he first met his late wife.

Five years separate the two halves of “ Super Happy Forever,” a delicate, unassuming but subtly complex love story in reverse that doesn’t dart between timelines, instead offering the past as a bittersweet chaser to the present. This Gallic-Japanese co-production will burnish Igarashi’s reputation on the festival circuit, though it may be too low-key for theatrical distribution in many markets — its youthful slant and quiet formal simplicity make it a viable fit for specialist streaming platforms. For it was at that same resort, on that carefree vacation, that Sano first met Nagi (Nairu Yamamoto, wholly beguiling), the cheerily outgoing young woman who would, at some point in the next half-decade, become his wife, and at another, suddenly and unexpectedly die in her sleep.

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