The Japanese are a curious lot with their sexual quirks. A few years ago, I reviewed a film (THE WANDERING MOON) about a pedophile. Because he was a nice pedophile, the Japanese, and presumably anyone else who liked the movie, thought that his relationship with a child was romantic. News flash: It’s just not. Now there’s a new movie about a stalker-kidnapper but she’s a nice stalker-kidnapper so some people think that this is romantic too. Another news flash: It’s not either. To be fair to the Japanese though, this story wasn’t their idea. MY MISSING VALENTINE is a remake of a Taiwanese film of the same name from 2020 that was the big winner at the Golden Horse Awards that year taking home five honours including best feature film and best original screenplay. That film, however, was slightly different to this one. In the Taiwanese version, the stalker-kidnapper is male. In this Japanese version, it’s female. I’m not sure which is more wrong but clearly director Nobuhiro Yamashita/山下敦弘 didn’t think it was a dealbreaker to make the film even with the roles switched up.

Hajime (Masaki Okada/岡田將生, DRIVE MY CAR) is a young man who is always one second quicker than everyone else. He wakes up each morning just before his alarm goes off, he speeds on his moped and he laughs at jokes just before the punchlines are delivered. He shares a tiny apartment with his married sister and her husband, who both seem to wear the same orange makeup as a former American reality show host for some reason, and he works as a clerk at a post office in Kyoto. Reika (Kaya Kiyohara/清原果耶, WE MADE A BEAUTIFUL BOUQUET) is a young woman who is always one second slower than everyone else. Every day she comes into the post office to buy one stamp for a letter she’s posting and she’s always slow to find the 84 yen in her change purse to pay for it. On the day after Hajime had planned to go to the fireworks festival with his love interest, indie musician Sakurako (Rion Fukumuro/福室莉音), he wakes up to find that he’s lost a day. He has no recollection of what happened the day before and, even stranger, he’s sunburnt.

What is with the Japanese… and the Taiwanese for that matter??? Even with the roles reversed, this story is so wrong. Without giving too much away in case you’re foolish enough to watch this film, after sidelining Sakurako, something happens that gives Reika the opportunity to kidnap Hajime who is essentially comatose. Without his knowledge, much less his consent, she literally drags him to a beach where she props him up and takes photos of the two of them together. How is this even remotely romantic? He only knows her from the post office, or so he thinks. When he realises that he’s lost a day (and strangely again, he seems to be the only one who has realised it yet it’s very clear that pretty much everyone has lost a day, he starts putting the pieces together and discovers that he and Reika were besties when they were kids. Now how did he not remember that? Of course, one could argue why didn’t she just remind him the first time she entered his post office but then we wouldn’t have had this dumb movie.

The Taiwanese version saw the male part as a bus driver and the female part was a post office clerk. I haven’t watched it but it makes sense as the stalker-kidnapper takes a bus to get to the beach. Either way though, this story is just so out of sync with modern sensibilities and is the antithesis of what “romantic” is supposed to mean. I don’t know about you but if I was stalked and kidnapped by someone from my childhood, I’d be calling the police asap.

MY MISSING VALENTINE opens in Hong Kong today (February 14^th). If stalking someone is your way of saying “I love you” this Valentine’s Day, by all means, enjoy this film.

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