Just watched this at the Fantastic Fest 2011 in Austin and was blown away. It defies genres. The director is know as a pink movie director, basically a kind of Japanese soft porn, but the film truly transcends this label. It's very very funny at times, has a cuteness to the characters, is sexually quite explicit, yet at the same time very romantic.
Fundamentally, though, it is fundamentally a film about the existentially condition of life, about living in the now, enjoying life and love to the full and as such is very successful. Humor and sexuality are both used with good effect to demonstrate the temporal and immediate nature of human existence. You laugh, you cry, you get horny, you listen to the strange songs and you think about the nature of our short lives on this earth.
The cinematography is very good, the pale and low contrast images capture the landscape, particularly the water, very well.
All in all, a true pearl of a movie!
