Have you ever had a heart-to-heart with a bartender? I’ve often heard peers joke about how bartenders are basically therapists with a license to sell alcohol, and although I haven’t expressed my inner turmoil to any drink-serving strangers, the phenomenon is pretty widespread across the globe. What is it about bartenders that make people want to open up to them? Is it a combination of being in a familiar environment while buzzed and having a deep longing for unprecedented conversation?
This is only part of the premise of Reunion, a 2021 science-fiction drama directed by à la Tetsuo: The Iron Man, prompting Doc to confirm that he put them together himself to allow her to walk.
. The film takes place in an unspecified future and follows a young woman named Mika, who awakens only to realize that she has no memory of who she is. The only reason she knows her name is because Doc, a male antique collector who is at her side when she wakes up, hands her a badge with her name on it and claims to have saved her life. Mika quickly notices that her legs have been replaced with metal scraps,
Doc introduces Mika to “Reunion”; an intimate bar that exists outside of the space-time continuum, where people from different time periods come to visit. In order to time travel into this particular dimension, you need to get a hold of a “key”, which is a mouse-looking device that most visitors come across by accident. Ensuring her safety, Doc makes Mika the new bartender at Reunion, taking the place of the pleasantly peppy Yuri, who has worked there for one hundred years. Mika is instantly drawn into numerous correspondences with the lonely clientele that somehow found their way there. After learning so much about her guests, Mika becomes curious about her own past and embarks on a journey to discover it, despite the fact that Doc has warned that it could be dangerous.
The concept of the film alone was enough to spark my interest; even though the bartender-being-a-therapist quip is prevalent in most countries, it seems to hit differently in Japan. Japanese “host clubs” instantly came to mind while watching this film, with their main appeal being that they cater to those who are seeking attentive and often flirtatious conversation with their host or hostess. The popularity of these clubs only shows just how accepted they have become in Japanese society, and it begs the question of why these seemingly fabricated interactions are so in demand.
Although Reunion doesn’t directly tackle this question, it paints a pretty clear picture of how some of these interactions go down with each person Mika meets. Whether they’re visiting Reunion to temporarily escape their own time period or to find someone or something specific, there’s a veiled sense of longing that unifies them. Mika is exceedingly perceptive and empathetic, never failing to show her guests a smile and good hospitality, which is the reason why they open up to her so freely. This openness, of course, is what eventually inspires her own journey of self-discovery. Unfortunately, the film is very short, clocking at approximately fifty minutes, and only about half of that runtime is dedicated to the bar’s visitors.
The second half of the film explores Mika’s past or rather her process of discovering it. We are introduced to some very colorful characters, most notably Melda and Maia, two extremely fashionable cyborgs that serve to move the story forward. Their introduction in the film is by far the most visually memorable moment, and their performances are a joy to behold. The actress who plays Mika, Keiko Aizawa, also gives a solid performance, but although we do eventually see what happened to her legs, we don’t reach her full three-dimensional character depth. While I didn’t personally mind the absence of her fully detailed backstory, I can imagine that some audiences may be bothered by it. I believe that some stories work just fine with a level of ambiguity, and Reunion definitely falls into that spectrum.
The world that
-san has created here is so wonderfully fascinating that I enjoyed the viewing experience regardless of some of the unanswered questions and specifics. While I do wish that some aspects of the story could have been explored a bit further, I realize that a budget can only take a project so far, and what they managed to pull off within the measly fifty minutes is sufficiently endearing. Reunion is a mesmerizing cyberpunk arthouse drama that will remain relevant as long as human interaction does not cease to exist.We watched Reunion as part of the 2022 Japan Film Fest Hamburg (JFFH) line-up
Past Festival Coverage
The Hammer films of the late ’50s and ’60s are my go-to comfort films. I’m particularly partial to ones starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, but honestly, who doesn’t love… Covering all things scatological, Unco Film Festival is back with its twelfth installment of excreta exploration. Hosted by legendary mangaka Shintaro Kago, the festival displays the work of independent filmmakers… TikTok dances emanate eerily around you, a cacophony of booming cackles emit from influencers as they forcefully push their latest merch (that was most likely made in some far-off, exploitative… In the tradition of pseudo-local-TV broadcasts like Ghostwatch and WNUF Halloween Special, homegrown horror heads to N.Ireland in Dominic O’Neill’s Haunted Ulster Live. Set in 1998, TV newscaster Gerry Burns… Fuk’n Nuts is a 2023 American surrealist horror comedy short film, written and directed by Sam Fox. No stranger to the medium, Fox is known as the writer/director of the… Traumatised from witnessing the horrific death of her parents, Sara attempts to take her own life. Waking up in the aftermath of this, she cannot remember anything and does her…Lake of the Dead (1958) Film Review – A Classic Norwegian Haunted Lake Tale
Unco Film Festival Vol 12 – Extreme Excreta Exploration
#Chadgetstheaxe (2022) Film Review – Cancel Culture Gone Awry (Unnamed Footage Festival 666)
Haunted Ulster Live (2023) Film Review – Tune In for Horrors Near You [Unnamed Footage Festival 7]
Fuk’n Nuts (2023) Film Review – Caution! May Contain Crazy [Fantastic Fest]
The Free Fall (2021) Film Review – Dreams, Gaslighting, or Something Sinister?
Your typical ghoul next door; film enthusiast, horror fanatic, J-horror nerd, aspiring horror host, and all around geek. Will likely be found cuddling with their cat and reading an old smelly book, or stuffing their face with popcorn at the cinema!