Replace the chaos theory butterfly with a pigeon, extend Groundhog Day by six more interminable days, and you get Comme un Lundi, the first feature-length fiction film by young Japanese director Ryo Takebayashi, in theaters May 8, 2024.
What would you do if one of the most harrowing weeks of your life repeated itself again, and again, and again, and again, and again? Such is the pitch of this crazy Japanese film that follows the ordeal of Yoshikawa and his colleagues in a human-sized advertising agency, trapped in a time loop that repeats itself every Monday morning, October 25.
A thinly disguised critique of thealienation of the Japanese people by their work, with its long hours and the endless demands of an all-powerful boss, at the top of a hierarchical pyramid whose steps you can only climb by dint of hard work and seniority. Dedication, efficiency, sacrifice and boundless loyalty in the face of repetitive, exhausting tasks and unbearable deadlines provide the backdrop for this exhilarating office comedy, which also doubles as an anxiety-inducing huis-clos.
As one Monday traps us behind a desk, in the same place as the other employees, but also at the same level of incomprehension as them - we later discover that we've landed in a story that's been restarted nearly... 70 times! We're on the verge of burn-out in the face of this situation, and it's not the ultra-cut editing (right from the looping credits) that's going to calm our nerves.
But in the end, Ryo Takebayashi's bittersweet film is a sign of a certain - albeit slow - change in mentality among the younger Japanese, who have come to understand that work is not life and that the best is the enemy of the good. The director deals with the question ofpersonal fulfillment, and the repetitive motif becomes a pretext for rediscovering the importance of human relationships and self-fulfillment.
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