Though less combative than Gene Siskel, avant-garde composer John Cage had good advice for fans of minimalist Japanese cinema: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.” Megane’s writer-director Naoko Ogigami might not have had Cage in mind, but his spare film unfolds with the slow determination of a chrysanthemum when Taeko (Satomi Kobayashi), the harried professor of an unnamed subject at an unnamed university, begrudgingly reports to a remote seaside resort for what looks like a forced vacation. With the help of quirky locals—including an innkeeper (Ken Mitsuishi) who can handle only one guest at a time and a calisthenics enthusiast (the silently hilarious Masako Motai) who believes that eating shaved ice brings enlightenment—the hyperactive Taeko must master the art of “twilighting,” a subtitle-writer’s beautifully rendered translation of whatever’s Japanese for “chillin’ out on the beach.” If the Coen brothers made a movie based on a Zen koan, but that movie looked like a Japanese watercolor and had an understated, Chaplinesque sensibility…well, wouldn’t you want to check out the results?