Mondays: See You 'This' Week!

Story: Akemi Yoshikawa (Wan Marui) wakes up in the office on a Monday. She and her colleagues worked through the weekend and late into the night. As everyone slowly wakes up, a pigeon flies against the windowpane and shortly afterwards the boss, Nagahisa (Makita Sports), arrives in the office too. Yoshikawa and her colleagues still have a lot of work to do, because their deadline is coming up soon. Yoshikawa wants to do a good job mainly because she has applied for a job at their client's company. But doing the work she is repeatedly interrupted by her two colleagues Endo (Koki Osamura) and Murata (Yûgo Mikawa). They are convinced that they are stuck in a time loop and experience the same week over and over again. Yoshikawa doesn't believe them at first, but they are able to make precise predictions and they ask her to remember the pigeon flying against the window. After the week has passed, Yoshikawa doesn't remember anything, but then the pigeon flies against the windowpane again and the memories come back. Now she and her two colleagues are trying to find both the origin of the time loop and a solution.

Review: The same old office routine can be quite tiring. Mountains of tasks that are not getting any smaller, deadlines that have to be postponed so that at least the minimum can be achieved, working through the nights - and all this day in and day out. If you look at everyday life in Japan, it doesn't surprise you that a colleague's comment of being trapped in a time loop is only rewarded with a shrug. After all, who doesn't generally feel like that? But isn't everyday work the perfect material to actually carve a time loop story out of it? Director Ryo Takebayashi probably thought so too and put an entertaining sci-fi comedy on screen, in which the working conditions are also made fun of on a socio-critical level. Over time, we also find out a little bit more about the characters and their dreams and wishes, but of course, the big mystery is still how to break the time loop.

In recent years, there have already been some successful movies from Japan that have dealt with time travel in one way or the other. For example, "River", in which the time loop lasts only two minutes. In "Mondays" the loop lasts a good deal longer. The clue this time is that not only one person (or everyone) is aware of the repetition, but others can actively be made aware of it. Fortunately, there is a mental anchor, a trigger, so to speak, that brings back the memories: a pigeon that flies against the windowpane every morning. This is also fascinating because apparently only those who are already in the office at that time can be made aware of the repeating week. So, the boss, for example, is out. And it seems to be him who is responsible for the whole mess too. At least that's what you might think since he wears a supposedly cursed prayer chain. But it shouldn't come as a surprise for anyone that the truth presents itself a little differently.

In addition, the actual protagonist of the story, played by Wan Marui, also wants to take the chance of doing her job a little better each time in order to improve her chance of getting the new job. At one point in the story, this puts her in a moral conflict, because she would have to help her colleagues with another job to get out of the time loop if she doesn't want to be stuck in an endlessly repeating future in which she can't live the life she wants to live. How important her career is to her is also shown by the fact that she keeps ditching her boyfriend until he finally wants a break from the relationship. Of course, Yoshikawa has more than one opportunity to put everything right again, but she has to juggle with the various wishes she has for life and always has to consider the risk of the time loop suddenly ending and her not getting what she actually wants. Unfortunately, we learn very little about the other characters and their wishes.

However, since the story also revolves around gaining the trust of a colleague every week in order to convince them that the week repeats itself, there would have been room to make the rest of the characters a bit more three-dimensional too. The only one we learn more about is the boss, portrayed by Makita Sports (who is often only seen in supporting roles like in "I am a Hero"), as his secret passion is drawing manga. And so, we also get a story within the story at some point, which of course, is a mirror to what happens in the office. This turns out quite touching and also offers a few surprises, which make the story refreshingly different. Furthermore, with that "Mondays" also prevents the tempo to suddenly drop due to repetitions, or that we simply get bored. In fact, there is always something new happening, and some of the moments that happen again and again are merely points of orientation.

"Mondays" has a clever story, but it's not exactly groundbreaking. In this respect, the already mentioned "River" is definitely worth recommending more. But the familiarity of the office space and the mystery around the reason for the time loop as well as the fast pacing make this sci-fi comedy quite amusing, and it's always entertaining. A few nice extras, such as the rhythmic unison of the clocks, which introduces the week in an almost melodious way, or the fact that the viewer's most obvious questions are answered by the characters, give the movie an additional positive touch. The ending is satisfying too, maybe also because it plays a little with our expectations. After all, I would have liked to give "Mondays" an even better rating, but the rest of the characters would have needed to have more depth for that. However, with its 82 minutes, "Mondays" respects the viewer's time, and the movie is a nice addition to the time travel subgenre.

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