Asako I & II

Asako I & II

“Asako I & II” is another drama written and directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. It is a film about the private performances that people in love put on for one another, or so it often seems. In adapting Tomoka Shibasaki’s source novel, co-writer Sachiko Tanaka and Hamaguchi give us Asako (Erika Karata), who is shown not just as a person acting with her partner but also for herself; she wants to continue with her devoted boyfriend Ryohei (Masahigro Higashide). But unfortunately Ryohei is not Asako’s romantic ideal: Baku (also Higashide), an old flame of hers who disappeared without warning one day, is the man she can’t get out of her mind.

At least that’s what they would have us believe. A lot of Hamaguchi and Tanaka’s big ideas come through in open-ended dialogue; their characters talk about failing to connect, and quietly soldier on. But these routines or rather, the efforts made by them both while floundering to keep up routines are meant as more than conversation pieces for Asako and Ryohei. They speak volumes where words fall short; I only wish these figures said more about what they’re scared to discover about each other, and less about what their makers take for granted regarding love’s fragility.

Let me be clear: “Asako I & II” is not a bad movie, just one that doesn’t exist beyond itself. There are moments of poignance, like the few scenes where nothing happens in the otherwise feather light plot. Ryohei helps a traumatized (and non-communicative) stranger during the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake; Asako gives her lover a massage from the balls of his feet to his (nonexistent) calf muscles; Asako looks at a hazy, dark sky after a late-night bus ride; a chandelier falls onto an empty stage. These moments stick with you because they’re slow and thin as icicles.

But these segues are brief and rare. Most scenes in “Asako I & II” play out in real time, though very few seem to take place in the real world. Asako and Ryohei keep running into people like insecure actress Maya (Rio Yamashita) and unsentimental childhood friend Haruyo (Koji Nakamoto). But whatever context May or Haruyo provide directly or indirectly is woefully inadequate for understanding Asako and Ryohei’s unexamined anxieties outside of their love life.

“Guys don’t fall for girls like Asako at first sight,” Haruyo says. OK but why not? And what does Maya mean when she snaps back from being called out on her “cheap, narcissistic acting” by saying that “everybody does that,” meaning everybody “just [uses] the audience to be the center of attention.” Asking these kinds of questions only reveals so much about what lives Asako and Ryohei are afraid to live. Are they shallow and unmotivated people who need to be seen/grounded/motivated through someone else? Says who?

So while Hamaguchi and Tanaka’s characters aren’t necessarily introspective by nature, they’re also not supposed to be kiddie-pool shallow. But it’s hard to tell the difference in “Asako I & II” because most of the movie is about how placid its characters’ go along to get along dispositions are. Asako and Ryohei clearly like each other, but that’s apparently not enough to sustain a real relationship.

Then again: I can only deduce so much from Hamaguchi and Tanaka’s jarring, but not quite destabilizing interjections, like when Ryohei wonders aloud, “It’s like I’m back to square one. I don’t understand why,” or when Asako insists “I’m not admirable. I wanted to do something that wasn’t wrong.”

I honestly don’t think there is much else going on in “Asako I & II” besides some well directed/acted scenes of discrete heartache that may or may not make sense unless you’re the performers or their characters. There just isn’t a whole lot bubbling beneath these characters’ sensitive/precise/modest displays of emotionality. Maybe people like Asako and Ryohei exist; maybe I just haven’t met them yet.

Watch Asako I & II For Free On Gomovies.