Review | At the End of the Matinee film review: Japanese romance drama starring Masaharu Fukuyama is dull and inarticulate
- This drama about a romance between a classical guitarist and a veteran journalist totally fails to strike a chord
- The musical scenes are repetitive and the characters’ lack of communication is frustrating
2/5 stars
In a world rocked by disharmony, be it political, economic, geographical or romantic, two lonely middle-aged souls seem destined to remain apart in Hiroshi Nishitani’s dreary romance, At the End of the Matinee. Yuriko Ishida and Masaharu Fukuyama, in his fifth collaboration with the director, star in this globe-trotting adaptation of Keiichiro Hirano’s award-winning novel.
An on-screen romance between capable adults, rather than emotionally inarticulate teens, should be cause for celebration, but forty-something classical guitarist Satoshi Makino (Fukuyama) and veteran journalist Yoko (Ishida) prove no better equipped to articulate their feelings for one another than inexperienced middle-schoolers.
When introduced after one of Satoshi’s concerts in Tokyo, there is an instant attraction. But Yoko is stationed in Paris, and engaged to a slippery banker (Yusuke Iseya), whose job will soon relocate them both to New York. Satoshi, though single, as all tortured artists must be, spends his free time locked away in darkened hotel rooms, reeling from panic attacks and guzzling bottled water. Neither makes a move, and they part ways.
Only when a terrorist attack rocks Yoko’s Paris offices is Satoshi compelled to act, flying to her side and begging her not to go ahead with the wedding.