Time travel has been a frequent, if often under-appreciated, facet of Japanese cinema. The anime and animated Television series and films of Doraemon the robotic cat from the future has for many remained an entry point not only in time travel narratives but also to Japanese popular culture. Moreover, The Girl Who Leapt through Time – as both an original novel and in the guise of the numerous TV series, films, even a stage play, that it has inspired – has further proved a national institution.

Like the comparable Summertime Machine Blues, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes was based on work produced by the Kyoto-based theatre group Europe Kikaku, and similarly offers a youthful, comedic and sly look at time travel. As such, there are comparable features and a common quirky, ultimately romantic outlook that addresses time as a fundamentally unstable entity, a force that requires humans to take some measure of control over its complex machinations.

Further elevating the film, and its thematic inquiry into time travel, is the fact that it all unfolds in a single 70 minute long take, or at least the illusion thereof (like Hitchcock’s Rope [1948] it works to mask cuts through compositions that cover part or all the frame). Travel through time is both central and a point of departure for first-time director Yamaguchi here. Based on a 2011 short film entitled The Howling, directed by this film’s screenwriter Ueda Makoto, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes employs a simple but ingenious premise to explore its time-bending conceit.

Shot in only 10 days for a meagre budget that only allowed shooting at night in the (real) café location, Yamaguchi’s debut is an affable, endearing exploration of human agency in a world where time waits, or indeed in any other way offers help, for no man. In a world in which technological saturation and mediation means that one is frequently removed from time (think of the incessant attempts to capture moments on film instead of experiencing them directly), this film cleverly reminds us of the need to seize the moments as they arrive.