A star of the hit cop show ¡°Aibou¡± (¡°Partners¡±) since its debut in 2000, Yutaka Mizutani has had a parallel career as a film director, beginning with his 2017 drama ¡°Tap: The Last Show.¡±

His fourth feature is the four-part omnibus ¡°Piccola Felicita,¡± a title which means ¡°little pleasures¡± in Italian.

Scripted by Mizutani, who has come up with cute plot twists to tie together its segments, the film starts off formulaic with a TV-drama vibe, but in its second half it becomes a fever dream of passion and remorse, ending in a play-like coda soaked in irony and surrealism.