Beautiful Sunday(ビューティフルサンデー)

It’s no longer a news bulletin that the pressures of modern urban living can result in disconnection and despair, but “Beautiful Sunday” casts a strangely pleasing spell as a droll and formalistic comic drama about the various relationships among, and odd obsessions of, the residents of a Tokyo apartment block. With director Tetsuya Nakashima working in a similar, equally satisfying style as in his 1995 debut, “Happy Go Lucky,” pic manages the neat trick of being both very funny and very sad. Fests are a good bet, although film’s commercial fate is shadowy due to a deliberate style and episodic narrative that require extra viewer effort.