When I was a teenager in a Pennsylvania mill town “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by The Animals was my personal anthem, as it was for American soldiers then fighting and dying in Vietnam. I finally made my escape, thankfully.
Koji (Tappei Aono), the earnest protagonist of Masaki Tsujino’s “A Tale of the Riverside” also wants out of a bad situation, stuck as he is managing a busy minshuku (Japanese-style inn) alone in a natural beauty spot in the middle of nowhere. His single dad (Yoshimasa Kondo) has eloped with a secret girlfriend, leaving the family business to his younger son.
This opening promises comedy, and Tsuijno, who is making his feature directorial debut at age 50-plus, tries hard for laughs, mostly supplied by motormouth characters who might as well be carrying signboards saying “comic relief.” But taking inspiration from Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” and Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate,” Tsujino shifts the story toward awkward romantic drama, with the two principals pursued by darkness in their pasts.