THE LOVE OF ANOTHER
AT THE BEGINNING OF RYUSUKE HAMAGUCHI’S beguilingly kooky non-romance Asako I & II, the blank-eyed young woman of the title (Erika Karata) falls deeply, irrevocably in love with a wild-haired bad boy named Baku (Masahiro Higashide), who catches her eye on the streets of Osaka amid a fortuitous spray of firecrackers. Their relationship lasts no longer than a few quick scenes, in which we learn almost nothing about him, except for his habit of vanishing for days and weeks at a time. Soon enough Asako finds that her boyfriend has gone for good, and just as abruptly, Hamaguchi shuttles us forward several years, where we find the heroine about to hurl herself into a Vertigo-like vortex with the mild-mannered salaryman Ryohei (also played by Higashide), a dead ringer for her long-lost love. But by the time she’s securely installed this new man into her life, Baku—now a fashion model riding a wave of media ubiquity—swoops in out of the blue to reclaim Asako, who leaps at the chance with a decisiveness she has heretofore never exhibited.
In our age of relentless self-actualization, when codependency is often judged as some kind of moral failure, it can be aggravating to watch characters who seem to have no real backbone, who are revealed as paper-thin constructions when not in the presence of others. To be emotionally penetrating, we’re told, a story needs to be driven by nuanced, rounded, autonomous protagonists, a standard that never rises to. But Hamaguchi
