Mild spoilers for this review (I won't reveal anything, only speak lightly over themes)!

There's something wistfully sad and empty about this movie, and many others of the same genre of love-meets-some-magical-loophole (I'm looking at you, The Beauty Inside and Your Name). Because the tragedy feels so unavoidable, it makes every memory, even the happy ones, feel sorrowful and pitiful. There is also a stillness, a calmness that isn't common in western cinema in all these films which contributes to a sense of reality, if it makes sense. It turns something made out of fiction to a scene resembling a memory, like when you're recalling a passage from a book.

The lack of a huge plot twist in this one makes you almost feel suffocated.... call me a hopeless romantic but there was always a chance for something more to happen, for a solution, a cure and yet, it didn't. That just deepened the emptiness of everything, and made the story much sadder. I was surprisingly not angry at the end, only compassionate and left with a vague feeling of hopelessness.

The one big detail that bothered me was the intensity that is given to a relationship that barely has a week. There's a rushing to built closeness, to have you attached to characters you barely know, barely see, that fails a lot with me (I've seen it in another Japanese works before..). If I wasn't curious and (mildly) patient, I would've dropped this film.

Acting and filming were both on point, everything was far too beautiful! I absolutely adore Nana Komatsu, I feel this pull to watch more of her works (which seem very diverse, from romance to psychological thrillers).

This is honestly a great movie if you don't have high hopes and want something still, calm like river waters.