Film: "Asako I & II"
In this ‘Vertigo’-inspired love-triangle tale, a woman meets the perfect double of her mercurial first love, who mysteriously disappeared.
A truly original Vertigo riff, this enchanting love-triangle tale is something out of a dream, with all its curiosities, surprises and emotional depth. Asako (Erika Karata) and Baku (Masahiro Higashide) share an intense, all-consuming romance—but one day the mercurial Baku ups and vanishes. Two years later, now in Tokyo, Asako meets Baku’s exact double, a young worker named Ryohei—who may look like Baku but is a very different person. Ryohei has no secrets, he is honest and kind-hearted and will love Asako with a faithful, protective love, destined to last forever—the kind of love that’s so reassuring it might even be scary.
In the minute description of everyday life, shaken by epochal events like the Fukushima earthquake, or in the perfect rendering of Asako’s hesitations and uncertainty, Ryusuke Hamaguchi shows here his signature filmmaking: beautifully composed, radiance-breathing takes. Asako I & II confirms him as one of the most original filmmakers in contemporary Asian cinema, an auteur who has assimilated the Japanese filmmaking tradition, bringing it to a new level with his inimitable style and personal sensibility.
