‘Sunset Sunrise’: Rom-com finds pathos in peak pandemic setting

Scores of documentaries and fiction films have focused on or referenced the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and the resulting tsunami and nuclear meltdown. This triple disaster, which took approximately 20,000 lives, has yet to produce anything like Roberto Benigni’s 1997 film “Life Is Beautiful,” which found humor in a Nazi concentration camp, but Yoshiyuki Kishi’s rom-com “Sunset Sunrise” comes close in its blend of comedy and pathos, both painted in primary colors.

Set in COVID-era Japan at its paranoid peak when people were spraying groceries with disinfectant and isolating themselves for weeks at a time, the film unfolds in Minamisanriku, Miyagi Prefecture, a real-life town that was severely impacted by the 2011 disaster. The townspeople are still processing the trauma, including Momoka Sekino (Mao Inoue), a woman in her mid-30s who works at City Hall and lives with Akio (Masatoshi Nakamura), a rough-hewn fisherman she refers to as “father.”

Into their tight-knit community bumbles Shinsaku (Masaki Suda), an employee at a large Tokyo company who sees Momoka’s online ad for a tenant and is amazed by the low rent for her spacious house near the shore. Soon after, Momoka enters the house and freaks out when she finds a smiling Shinsaku already there.

A by-the-book bureaucrat, she tells him he will have to self-isolate for two weeks. But Shinsaku, a keen fisherman burning to wet a line, is soon out the door and at the dock, rod and reel and in hand. And though he hides behind a mask and sunglasses, two elderly villagers immediately suspect that a stranger is in their midst.

Couldn’t Shinsaku have found good fishing and cheap accommodations for teleworking closer to home? Quite possibly, but the script by TV and movie hitmaker Kankuro Kudo, based on a novel by Shuhei Nire, is more about broad-brush gags and heartwarming narrative arcs than boring real-world logic.

Kishi, who won critical acclaim for his dark relationship drama “(Ab)normal Desire” (2023), seemingly returns to his roots as a director of TV dramas. In its folksy humor, over-the-top acting and piscatorial theme, however, the film also recalls Yoji Yamada’s 22-installment “Free and Easy” series about a lazy salaryman (the recently deceased Toshiyuki Nishida) who becomes a fishing guru to his company president (Rentaro Mikuni).

As in the “Free and Easy” films, the main protagonist may be the butt of jokes, with Shinsaku framed as a clownish and clueless boy from the big city. But his eagerness to learn local ways impresses the townspeople, including the wary Momoka, who starts to take a shine to this puppy-doggish newcomer.

Her male admirers, beginning with the bluff proprietor (Pistol Takehara) of an eatery that is their unofficial headquarters, doubt his motives and intentions, though. Their motto? Protect Momoka!

As this comic conflict moves toward its foregone conclusion, the film serves up shot after shot of local delicacies — all appreciatively devoured by Shinsaku — as well as reveal after plot reveal about Momoka and Akio designed to stir sighs and open tear ducts.

All this may say nothing new about the disaster, but “Sunset Sunrise” has other aims, such as humanizing the disaster’s victims by making them lovable and even silly. And it makes the local cuisine look irresistibly delicious. As a travel promotion for Minamisanriku, the film is a smashing success.