Do you believe in reincarnation? Apparently, a sizeable  chunk of the Japanese population does, which goes a long way to explaining the popularity of the 2017 novel “Phases of the Moon” by Shogo Sato/佐藤正午. The book has now been turned into a feature film and people who love paranormal tear jerkers will be reaching for their hankies with this one.

Kei Osanai (Yo Oizumi/大泉洋, FOOD LUCK) is a fresh fish wholesaler living alone in the northern Japanese coastal city of Hachinohe. As we come to learn, Kei wasn’t always alone and he wasn’t always in that line of work. He used to be happily married to Kozue (Kou Shibasaki/柴咲コウ, 47 RONIN), they had a beautiful 18-year old daughter named Ruri and he was an architect, but seven years earlier, tragedy struck and his family was killed in a car accident, throwing his life upside down. Ruri, we learn, was a special child. When she was 7, she developed an unexplained high fever that lasted for days and, when she recovered, she was different. She’d wander off to places she’d never been to before, she knew the words to a song she’d never heard before and she developed a special bond to her teddy bear, which she named Akira. Flash back 25-odd years and university student Akihiko Misumi (Boyband “Snow Man” member Ren Meguro/目黒蓮), who is called Akira by his very close friends, meets Ruri Masaki (Kasumi Arimura/有村架純, WE MADE A BEAUTIFUL BOUQUET) on a rainy day outside the record shop where he works. For him, it’s love at first sight and Ruri certainly likes him too but she carries a dark secret with her that keeps them from being together. Could Ruri Osanai be the reincarnation of Ruri Masaki? Ruri Osanai’s best friend, Yui Midorisaka (Sairi Itoh/伊藤沙莉), certainly thinks so and she has some evidence that could convince Kei that his daughter lives on

Director Ryuichi Hiroki/廣木隆 (800 TWO LAP RUNNERS) pulls out all the stops to get the tears flowing in this melodrama but at my screening the tears all seemed to be on screen, especially coming from Yo Oizumi as Kei first struggles with the loss of his wife and daughter and then with the possibility that they’re really not that far away. Unfortunately, the story is completely predictable once the tale moves to the second Ruri and then it’s a good hour and a half before the story’s equally predictable final card is played. If this film were maybe thirty minutes shorter, it might have been a good watch but, as it is, PHASES OF THE MOON is a slog to get through even for ardent believers of reincarnation… and I’m one of them. Adding to the misery — the audience’s, not the characters’ — is a continuity issue. Kei runs into Yui at the cemetery where she tells him about her evidence of reincarnation yet when he meets her for tea a short time later, that conversation seems to have been forgotten. You’d think he’d remember a conversation as monumental as that, even more so as someone else had previously visited Kei offering his own bit of evidence.

To the film’s credit though, the acting is fairly decent, with the exception of Kei Tanaka/田中圭 (WHISPER OF THE HEART), who plays Ruri Masaki’s aggrieved husband, Ryunosuke. Wooden doesn’t even begin to describe his performance here. And really, who starts a new office job at the end of the workday? The film also loses marks on its overuse of two John Lennon songs. Audiences will know all the words to one of them by the time the final credits roll.

PHASES OF THE MOON opens in Hong Kong on Thursday (July 6th). Unless you’re an incurable believer in reincarnation, you can safely give this one a miss.

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