Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes

Kato, who runs a small cafe in Kyoto, goes up to his flat and sees himself on the computer screen. The Kato on screen is speaking from two minutes in the future. The television downstairs and the monitor upstairs are linked, with exactly two minutes between them. The film is not interested in the physics of time travel. It is interested in how fast people will try to exploit a two-minute advantage. As soon as his friends find out, they turn the two screens to face each other to extend the view, then start hunting lottery numbers, and then things get out of hand. Here the form is the material. The film is constructed to read as one unbroken take, with the camera running up and down the staircase, and every transition has to match footage shot two minutes earlier frame for frame. The screenplay is therefore also a timing chart. It is Junta Yamaguchi's first feature. The budget was around three million yen, roughly twenty-seven thousand dollars. It was shot on an iPhone, with the director also handling camera and editing. Makoto Ueda wrote it. The cast includes Kazunari Tosa, Aki Asakura and Riko Fujitani. Who it is for: anyone after low-budget science fiction comedy that is smart enough to follow its own rule all the way down. Who it is not for: viewers who want depth from performance; the real acting here is in the timing and the characters are deliberately thin.