“Norwegian Wood” is a lovely film — which seems like a strange thing to say about a piece of work that centers on love and loss. But perhaps that’s part of the point of the film, and the 1987 novel by Haruki Murakami on which it’s based. The world is a hard place, but also a beautiful one. And sometimes immense beauty is found in the things we eventually conclude we most need to reject.

Such reflections make this film about that age-old topic, the love triangle, fresh, even vitally important. It’s set, though, in the past.