a review of 下班后

2024 CRITERION CHALLENGE #47: 1980s + FLOPUARY #3 Absolutely not surprising that this was kind of a flop in its original release. Once Dunne's character bolts Rosanna Arquette's apartment, he's embarking upon one of the absolute bleakest nights I can imagine in a comedy film, and I would not fault the audience for turning on him at that point and just getting angrier at him as the film continues on. He keeps landing in the arms of stranger and stranger women (including one man) until he finds himself literally full circle, frozen as an abject and agonized figure at the end, so thoroughly broken by his experiences in the world that he greets his grind of a cubicle-denizen day job (as a "word processor", no less) with relief. We must imagine Sisyphus happy.