Penalty Loop

Warning, some spoilers ahead. This is a film that is hard to discuss without them. You've been warned!

It's heavily implied by the name just what Penalty Loop (Shinji Araki, 2023) is feeding into, the trend of successful and often very good time loop films: Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes and River (both available via Third Window) being the standouts, so here is another instance of the same trope, though whereas those films were comedies, Penalty Loop goes for a somewhat different tone.

After the murder of his girlfriend Yui (Rio Yamashita), Jun (Ryuya Wakaba) takes his carefully constructed revenge upon her murderer, Mizoguchi (Yusuke Iseya) - only to awake the next morning to the same day, to once again take revenge. Yet her murderer seems aware of what has already happened...

The film’s opening scene sets the initial tone, the shadow moving before the sleeping form of Jun provides a sense of foreboding. You know without knowing why – or, rather you intuit – that nothing good is going to happen. Quickly the film then moves into revenge and here it provides little to no context, this is initially no bad thing, because it raises questions in the viewer’s mind. We know that the killer of Jun’s girlfriend has been apprehended, even if we're only told this in passing. So how is it that Jun is going to work, clearly with an end in mind, and this electrician is there to be taken vengeance upon? Moreover once vengeance has been had, how is it that Jun is again living the same day but not the same moments, with hints that even the murderer, Mizoguchi, is aware of what has occurred and unable to stop events – yet Mizoguchi alone seems to understand what is happening?   

As with all looping films there is a trap, both for the people stuck in the loop and potentially the audience, because as we have here, initially there is the first loop (even if we do not know it) and then the second, edited to be shorter but potentially more of the same and director Araki thoughtfully ensures that there is similarity and difference and enough of both to be intriguing and not tedious (as is always the risk): too much repetition and the viewer switches off.  

That said potential problem #2 is always just around the corner too; if it is a matter of revenge taken in various forms, well that is hardly enough to sustain a 100-minute film. As with all stories and characters, there needs to be development, consistency and change. At first we see this in how Jun recognises that he is at risk, as he can see his girlfriend’s murderer becoming swiftly aware of how someone is out to kill him, and how Mizoguchi adjusts events to try and discover who it is that is murdering him. So the film switches a bit, takes an unusual turn of events, seen partially from the murderer's view as Mizoguchi sees himself as a victim, unable to avoid his fateful murder.

As films must, the narrative adjusts since vengeance can only maintain interest for so long, so Jun and Mizoguchi find themselves in a curious scenario where they become something close to, if not quite, friends. Perhaps it is the camaraderie of being in an intense situation. 

This year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme’s theme is "Justice and Judgement" and Penalty Loop certainly fits that category. Jun is seeking... what? Justice? Judgement? Vengeance? The lattermost you would think until you realise what he is truly seeking and in seeking it finds something different.  

Penalty Loop moves relatively seamlessly between violence and almost absurdist comedy as the two men find themselves almost-friends; the violence has scope for being excessive but certainly never falls into that trap. It keeps it bloody enough to be realistic and understandable, to allow the anger behind Jun's act of revenge to be real. The humour, when it hits, is very much tied to the strange bond that is formed between the two men: well, if I have to die, I die... and these moments are often the strongest in the film because they get to the core of questions of rightness, wrongness, what is the purpose of revenge, as well as seeing someone capable of a crime as a person. After all, our protagonist, Jun, is single-mindedly out to kill Mizoguchi and rightly or wrongly, that is premeditated murder of a person... even if they return the next day.  

If there is a problem with the narrative it is the relative lack of context relating to Yui. You can argue that much of the film is an exploration of grief and violence in various aspects, the impact of the need for vengeance, but what seemed to be lacking is an exploration of Yui’s character and her relationship with Jun. There are moments of flashback that suggest hidden aspects to her history.  The reasons for her murder are given some later prominence but arguably not enough is done with the ideas to really make it all that meaningful. You can argue that the catalyst should not matter too much, but there is not quite enough to the resultant narrative. There's just enough made of Yui’s unusual story to make me want that explored in more depth, especially when it shows aspects of her murder. The film tries to partially explain why she died but not in enough detail to make it as impactful as it could be. There is an argument to suggest the film should have either gone into it more or less, because the former would have made Jun’s emotions more meaningful and made of Yui a more rounded person; whereas the latter would have allowed the film to focus more intensely upon the nature of vengeance, the impact of it, and the surprise then brought about by finding in the subject of your revenge a real person, not just some object of hate.

Visually the film tends towards a formalisation of images, and much of the tone comes through the music – veering towards the ambient electronic - and performances. It’s not going to strike you with its beatific imagery, but when it does go for formalised image it is certainly striking. The scenes within the internal lettuce farm (honestly not sure what it is but that’s my best description) have a certain overwhelming power, Jun is seen as a small creature amongst these huge racks of lettuce or kale and maybe here there is a metaphor as even in his revenge, for all he considers he has control, he is a small powerless thing, as we see in one of the best sequences where the two men – murderer and vengeance-seeker – go bowling.  

Some films are tough to rate because of when you watch them and I’ll be honest, I watched Penalty Loop having felt awful for a few weeks. I've gone from watching a couple of films a night to watching two in a week if I'm lucky, so in that context any film has to fight against my not feeling too well and so it’s a testament to Shinji Araki’s second film that, from the first moment, when watching the screener provided, I wanted to see what would happen, because those few seconds gave tone and sense enough that this would be a film worth investing my time in. And it was. True it’s an imperfect film, but films, like vengeance, are rarely perfect. They are messy objects and Penalty Loop provides a new and skewed take on the time loop film, which is what you feel other films will need to do to allow the almost-genre to continue.  

The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme started 7-February and Penalty Loop is showing from 15-February. See the film's webpage to find out when and where near you. 

Screener courtesy of the Japan Foundation.