‘Super Happy Forever’: Melancholy romance makes most of fleeting happiness

Kohei Igarashi’s “Super Happy Forever” is bitter and sweet, in that order. It’s a love story that starts at the unhappy end and then flips back to the beginning. That might sound like a recipe for ruefulness, yet this isn’t a bummer in the vein of nonlinear romantic dramas such as Derek Cianfrance’s “Blue Valentine” (2010). Rather, it’s a reminder that our past happinesses still count for something, even if they prove fleeting.

The melody of Bobby Darin’s 1959 signature hit, “Beyond the Sea,” echoes through the film. It’s a song about yearning for a distant lover (“We’ll meet beyond the shore / We’ll kiss just as before”), but the lyrics take on a more melancholy resonance here.

There’s nobody waiting for Sano (Hiroki Sano) when he returns to the seaside hotel where he first met his wife, Nagi (Nairu Yamamoto), five years earlier. The setting is a faded beach resort on the Izu Peninsula, once a popular destination for honeymooning couples. But the hotel is now on the verge of closure, while Nagi has recently died.

Sano is still in the early stages of grief: numb, sullen and quick to lash out. He might have picked a better companion for the trip than old pal Miyata (Yoshinori Miyata), who responds to his grouchiness by quoting 13th-century poet Kamo no Chomei and spouting spiritual claptrap he’s learned at a self-help seminar.

When the pair run into some other initiates from said seminar — the name of which supplies the film’s curious title — Sano dials up the unpleasantness, though you can hardly blame him. He also becomes fixated on finding a baseball cap that got lost during his previous visit, the significance of which will only become clear later on.

Just as its protagonist is starting to get insufferable, the film suddenly hits the rewind button to show how he and Nagi first met. Crucially, it also switches perspective to Nagi, who turns out to be good company. Finding herself at a loose end after her traveling partner cancels, she’s happy to hang out with Sano and Miyata, though also finds time to befriend a Vietnamese housekeeper, An (Hoang Nh Quynh).

The film’s reverse chronology could easily have turned these low-key scenes into an exercise in dramatic irony, yet the couple’s initial encounter is no less charming for the knowledge of what’s to come. (As the older Sano has already admitted, their marriage won’t be a happy one.)

Sano and Miyata — the performers, that is — reportedly asked Igarashi to let them play themselves, which would explain why they barely seem to be acting at all. Yamamoto is also endearingly unfiltered, in a film that has little use for artifice. The Japanese-French co-production puts its resources to good use: The visuals and sound have a finesse that’s rare in homegrown indie fare.

In both setting and vibe, “Super Happy Forever” has something in common with Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun” (2022), even if Igarashi doesn’t deliver such a devastating emotional punch. Any lingering doubts about his decision to tell the story back to front are resolved during the coda, which shifts the focus to a seemingly secondary character and provides an unexpectedly satisfying resolution in the process. Sometimes happy endings are just a question of knowing which way to look.