‘April, Come She Will’ promises more than it delivers

Given the widely reported apathy toward relationships and sex among Japan’s youth, it’s tempting to wonder if romantic dramas shouldn’t properly be filed under fantasy.

Filmmakers working on the fringes of the commercial mainstream, such as Rikiya Imaizumi (“Just Only Love”) and Yoshiyuki Kishi (“(Ab)normal Desire”), have grappled with the complexities of modern romance and sexuality. By contrast, the major studios seem content to keep churning out paeans to pure love that have as much bearing on the present-day reality as a kabuki production.

Tomokazu Yamada’s “April, Come She Will” promises a break from convention. The Toho-produced drama, adapted from a 2016 novel by Genki Kawamura, purports to be less interested in the blossoming of love than in what comes afterward: disappointment, compromise, wedding bells and all the rest.

“How do you keep love from ending?” ponders Yayoi (Masami Nagasawa), a veterinarian who’s preparing to tie the knot with her former shrink, Shun (Takeru Satoh). As they snuggle up on the sofa and flick through wedding magazines, the pair seem like an ideal match. Yet there’s a coolness to their interactions, which is confirmed when they retire to separate bedrooms at the end of the night. A love once new has now grown old.

When Shun awakes on Yayoi’s birthday to find that she has disappeared, it takes him longer than it really should to deduce the reason: the arrival of a letter from his college girlfriend, whom he broke up with a decade earlier. Haru (Nana Mori) is writing from the picturesque Salar de Uyuni salt flat in Bolivia — a destination they’d once planned to visit together — and she reminisces poetically about the love they shared.

In flashbacks, we see how the pair met through their university photography circle, and it’s here that the film comes apart. Mori (star of Netflix series “The Makanai”) is an immensely likable performer, but she’s also over a decade younger than Satoh. That age gap proves insurmountable, giving their tentative courtship an unseemly tinge: It should be sweet, but it’s like watching a teacher seduce one of his students.

Satoh and Nagasawa make a more convincing screen couple, even if the film’s telescoped narrative leaves little space for them to show what was holding their relationship together. A brief scene of (surprisingly natural) physical intimacy between them ends up saying more than the script’s endless ruminations on the nature of love.

Nagasawa’s casting underscores the film’s resemblance to an earlier entry in the romantic canon: Isao Yukisada’s “Crying Out Love in the Center of the World” (2004), a tearjerker about an adult man searching for his vanished fiancee while reminiscing about his first love. Nagasawa played the childhood sweetheart in that film, which also featured terminal illness, photogenic overseas locations and a pivotal role for a defunct physical format beloved of hipsters (cassette tapes then, camera film now).

It was no masterpiece, but it clicked in a way that this doesn’t. Yamada, a commercial and music video director making his feature debut, conjures a few striking images but can’t seem to sustain a consistent mood or emotional throughline.

Even the film’s jaded view of romance turns out to be a feint, as it pivots to a classic love story finale, complete with surf, sobs, rhapsodic music and golden-hour lighting. All that’s missing is a reason to care.