Until the Lights Come Back

A nice and very sentimental film about love and live in Tokyo displayed before the background of a power failure on the night of Dec 23rd in Tokyo. The theme is not new, nor is the implementation in the form of intertwining story lines. Despite the obvious lack of new ideas the result is quite pleasing. What you can expect are a set of nicely displayed characters acting in a calm atmosphere of people suddenly coming to rest from there busy lives due the breakdown of public live after the power failure. Unlike contemporary American movies there are few melodramatic moments. The stories told do not really climax and typical for Japanese storytelling have an ambivalent ending with only one happy end and some open threads, which are up for the audience to conclude. Characters displayed are a nice sample of Tokyo life, having so much in common with the people I meet every day in this crazy town that I felt immediately comfortable with the setting. The acting is good, which in this case means it is hardly noticeable and the characters are very believable. Every character in the movies has to clean up a bit of his love life, finally realizing that relationships have ended, accepting facts of live that have changed or tying up threads of live from a remote past. We are mostly told about old love and shattered illusions. New love is only hinted on and it adds to the overall mood of the film that the audience is left to imagine where it might lead to.I watched the the film on a flight back from Tokyo on Dec 23rd, which is the day of the year the plot of the film is supposed to take place on. Being in a bit of a sentimental Christmas mood the film did not fail to show the intended effect on me.