A Japanese film about love with something of a French touch, Akira Yamamoto’s third feature struggles to extract a meaningful story from a rather airless mise en scene, despite a directorial eye, and script, that are not short on visual and narrative ideas. Indulgently long, After the Fever begins well but soon drifts into a slow waltz of amorous angst and frustration that all but the most patient audiences will find it difficult to respond to.

Near the beginning of this rich, engaging, funny, touching saga about a year in the life of a family who run a rural Korean tofu factory, it seems as if an early setback – when they shockingly run out of the ‘soft and silky’ variety of tofu – is going to be about as bad as it gets for the three-generational clan at the heart of the story. They bicker and snap at each other, but the bonds of affection are obvious. Yet in his convincing debut debut feature, writer-director Oh Jung-min starts to send ripples of disturbance through the narrative, gradually turning a light story for local audiences with into something more resonant and universal.