It All Began When I Met You

Ten people look for love, a home and the perfect DVD in Katsuhide Motoki’s celebration of Tokyo Station.

“Today was a good day, right?”

Why are Christmas clichés so much better than regular clichés? Throw any of the events from Love, Actually into a film set in any other time of the year and audiences would walk out, tutting at how terribly predictable, syrupy and cheesy the film they saw was. Chuck a few presents, carollers and Rockin’ Around the Christmas Trees in there, though and it becomes an annual tradition. It’s what’s allowed the Hallmark channel to profit from the same three stories year after year.

What I’m saying is it’s about time another country got in on the action, and Japan is way ahead of the game, with the 2013 It All Began When I Met You. Telling six (ish) stories over a hundred minutes, the movie juggles some of its stories better than others. There are three that stand out: Reiko (Rin Takanashi) is an actress whose career never took off, and she decides to return to her hometown after a pantomime she’s organising is finished. She keeps a promise to herself by dining out at an expensive restaurant, where she meets CEO Kuroyama (Hiroshi Tamaki). Their initial meeting is a bit cold, and she feigns widowhood to escape, but things warm up when they coincidentally run into each other at a café the following day.

Meanwhile, Yukina (Fumino Kimura) is a fashion designer working hard for an upcoming bridal show. She is in a long-distance relationship with Takumi (Masahiro Higashide), who works in construction, and who is currently working in Sendai. Things between them are strained, and while she makes efforts with him, Takumi seems distant and uncaring, barely acknowledging her upcoming show. Lastly there’s Masayuki (Saburo Tokito), a train conductor with a terminal illness who faces his final Christmas with his family, as his ten year old son (Ryutaro Yamasaki) celebrates his Halfway to Adulthood.

Those three stories carry the bulk of the runtime, and hold the most narrative stakes. There are three others: a cake shop owner (Chieko Baisho) who pines for love lost half a century ago; her employee (Tsubasa Honda), who is too nervous to ask out a boy she knows from karaoke; and this odd story about a girl at an orphanage (Emiri Kai), who believes her parents are out there looking for her (spoilers: they aren’t). The last one feels the most out of place and is by far the least resolved. All the short stories work independently from one another, but are loosely connected. For example, Kuroyama’s sister (Nene Otsuka) is Masayuki’s wife, and Reiko’s play is in benefit to the orphanage. They’re minor, surface-level connections that nonetheless do just enough to make everything feel a bit more thought out.

Because at the end of the day, It All Began When I Met You is a pretty bog-standard Love, Actually clone. It has a fair amount of charm and many delightful moments but it’s impossible to ignore the obvious inspiration, and with it come the swathe of Christmas clichés. There isn’t a single story whose ending you can’t predict, but honestly that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s something comforting in watching these stories we know so well. It’s like a mug of hot chocolate when you finally get to settle in for the evening. Alongside this is a delightful cast who all bring something to their roles, and it all combines into a pretty decent, occasionally far too saccharine but overall amusing little Christmas treat.

Verdict: Top loaded with characters and stories, It All Began When I Met You culminates in some warm Christmas fuzzies, and sometimes that’s all you really want.

Overall entertainment: 6.5/10
Violence: 0/10
Sex: Barely a kiss/10
Sickly sweetness: 8/10
Break-ups by next Christmas: Almost everyone
Rice cake samurai: What on earth was that plush? And Takumi had a poster of it?
Attack, attack: I too am down with the kids and know all their lingo

It All Began When I Met You (2013)
Also known as: すべては君に逢えたから
Japanese

Director: Katsuhide Motok
Writer: Atsuko Hashibe

CAST

Hiroshi Tamaki – Kazuki Kuroyama
Rin Takanashi – Reiko Sasaki
Fumino Kimura – Yukina Yamaguchi
Masahiro Higashide – Takumi Tsumura
Tsubasa Honda – Natsumi Otomo,
Miwako Ichikawa – Chiharu Kishimoto
Emiri Kai – Akane
Saburō Tokitō – Masayuki Miyazaki
Nene Otsuka – Saori Miyazaki
Ryutaro Yamasaki – Koji
Chieko Baisho – Kotoko Oshima
Nenji Kobayashi – Taizo Matsuura