Wonder if you could travel into the future. But only by two minutes. That happens to the manager of a café in a small Japanese town because of an inexplicable time paradox. After discovering that the café’s television set is two minutes ahead of the one in his bedroom, which is right above the café, he and his friends look for solutions to go even further into the future and take advantage of the situation.
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is, first and foremost, a styling exercise, shot with a false single sequence plan of Hitchcockian memory to recreate the necessary unity of time that a film about time needs.
Indeed a whimsical idea, but also challenging to carry through in a feature film, however short, barely seventy minutes. Makoto Ueda’s obviously clockwork screenplay, despite a couple of missteps saved in the nick of time, manages, not without some difficulty, to keep the viewer interested until the moment when the mystery is revealed. However, first-time director Junta Yamaguchi manages the pacing, based on successive two-minute pictures, reasonably easily.
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is a conceptual film with merits and flaws, but interesting enough to have been chosen by the best fantasy film festivals, not least the 25th Fantasia International Film Festival.
Among the cast Aki Asakura, a trendy actress in Japan, especially for her roles in many television series and the instant cult 21st Century Girl.