"From the director of Happy Hour" comes
Asako I & II (
寝ても覚めても). This Japanese romance drama film directed by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, adapted by Hamaguchi and Sachiko Tanaka, and based on 2010 novel by Tomoka Shibasaki. Asako meets and falls madly in love with drifter Baku who one day drifts right out of her life. Two years later, working in Tokyo, Asako sees Baku again -- or, rather, a young, solid businessman named Ryohei who bears a striking resemblance to her old flame. They begin to build a happy life together until traces of Asako's past start to resurface.
The film stars Masahiro Higashide and Erika Karata. Both leads are excellent. Higashide will no doubt attract most attention, impressive in his ability to inhabit two very different characters, yet it's Karata who is the power at the heart of the film. However, Asako's only appeal seems to be that she's very pretty. Her depth of character she apparently keeps to herself. Also, there's just not a lot going on underneath the surfaces of these characters' sensitive, precise, and modestly expressed feelings.
Based on Shibasaki's novel, Hamaguchi's film strikes me as surprising, contagious, and entertaining as it thoroughly addresses the philosophy of couples' relationships. It is difficult to ignore that this delicate fantasy of love and destiny is much more intense than it seems on the surface thanks to a filmmaker capable of interpreting passion from silence. A peculiarly potent story about life's unexpected little ruptures - those odd coincidences, repetitions and shifts in perspective that can set off aftershocks in the human heart. A masterfully crafted work of romantic introspection that probes deep without feeling ponderous; Hamaguchi's light touch asking difficult questions and arriving at something at once hopeful and haunting. It seems to be a conventional and light comedy at first, but the film shows an ingenious study about the vanity of human passions. Hamaguchi keeps us guessing as to whether the characters' longings are innate or instilled by something beyond them and us. This bittersweet Japanese oddity doesn't quite work as a romantic melodrama but succeeds in illuminating anxiety-ridden millennial generation. The film proceeds from a premise that flirts with the mystic, but Hamaguchi executes it with elegantly rendered realism. The result is a picture that is simultaneously engaging and disconcerting. This is a film that, through its deceptively mellow means, manages to plumb the depths of what it truly means to love amid the uncertainties of self, others, and everything else besides. It's that ability to intertwine the themes of hope and longing, romance and loss, happiness and regret that makes the film such crucial viewing. The pleasures of the film lie in witnessing the keen understanding evinced by Hamaguchi and his cast of how genuine emotions in romantic dyads are expressed or, just as often, concealed. Comes so close to perfection, with a hilarious and insightful script, but the execution is just a little fumbled.
Simon says
Asako I & II (
寝ても覚めても) receives:
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