Based on the 2020 Taiwanese film, My Missing Valentine, Nobuhiro Yamashita’s One Second Ahead, One Second Behind tells the story of Hajime (Masaki Okada), a post office worker who breezes through life in fast forward, and Reika (Kaya Kiyohara), a photographer who is always just a second too late. Paying little attention to his surroundings as he speeds through each day, Hajime is suddenly struck with a sense of loss as he can’t remember an entire day. Trying to figure out where the mysteriously missing Sunday had gone, Hajime discovers that he may have missed more than just one day by living fast all this time.
To put it simply, Hajime is a peculiar man. He has few passions in the world, including listening to and calling in to a radio show, educating anyone who will listen on what exact areas of the city qualify as being Kyoto, and working quickly. He’s not one to think too deeply into things, and takes things as they come without letting them stress him out. He falls in love at first sight with a busker, offering to promote her CD and pay off her 400,000 yen debt just days after meeting. He even willingly discusses his personal woes such as his dad abandoning his family when he was younger on a live radio broadcast.
Reika is also an unusual character, but in a subtler way. Where Hajime is loud and exaggerated, she is soft-spoken, unassuming, and described as “plain.” Having a love for photography, the young girl is observant, taking in each moment with great attention to detail. Reika remembers small details, moments, and people in a way Hajime cannot. With the two being polar opposites, their story feeds into the popular phrase, “opposites attract,” but their relationship is not sudden or unfounded. Having first met long before they “met” again at the post office, one could say the two were fated with intertwining paths. In his search for his missing day, Hajime uncovers his past with Reika, and consequently learns to take things slower and allow her time to catch up.
One Second Ahead, One Second Behind is a uniquely written story that infuses a little bit of the supernatural into a seemingly ordinary love story. Affection and love are not overtly shown between the two protagonists, as the slow burn plot only has the two meeting romantically at the very end. Instead, the movie focuses on showing Hajime and Reika’s journeys to finding themselves first. Hajime learns to live and enjoy the moment, slowing down and transferring to a rural post office in hopes of running into Reika again. Meanwhile, Reika gains more confidence to speak up and go after what she loves. Although it is a romance film, it only switches focus to their relationship once they’ve found their way as individuals.
Yamashita also emphasizes how important it is to appreciate the little things in life through this story. Time doesn’t slow down for anyone, and life moves on, with or without you onboard. While the film challenges this concept when time stops for Hajime and nearly everyone else in the world, giving extra time for those who are slower, like Reika, this, unfortunately, cannot happen in real life. Without this sprinkle of magic in our everyday lives, the only solution is to live in the moment and find the perfect balance: Don’t speed through life so quickly you can’t enjoy the view, like Hajime, but don’t go so slowly that you forget to move forward, like Reika.
With so much of the plot centered around time and speed, the film was filled with time jumps and foreshadowing as well. Scenes switched quickly between past and present, and the film itself started off with a scene from the future, going backwards to explain how the characters ended up there throughout the movie. Sadly, the execution fell a little short. The scenes switched so quickly it was enough to give viewers whiplash, and the lack of explanation in bridging the past and present and the beginning and end was confusing. Okada and Kiyohara’s portrayal of their characters made up for what the film was lacking. Okada did a fantastic job as Hajime, a loud, almost obnoxious character, and Kaya’s portrayal of Reika’s shy but meaningful glances and smiles were perfectly suited to her character. Both actors also had great chemistry, conveying their emotions and carrying their conversations with a natural ease.
As the movie is about living in the moment, the way the film jumped around and had trouble sticking to one storyline at a time was just a little bit ironic. Despite this, One Second Ahead, One Second Behind is a quick and easy watch for anyone who wants a lighthearted love story that isn’t heavily centered around the romance itself.
