"Asako I & II": Trauma Processing and Film Obsession 

After the success of his five-hour film Happy Hour at the Locarno Film Festival, Ryusuke Hamaguchi made a more commercial attempt with Asako I & II. The film was selected for the main competition at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, but it received harsh criticism, making its reception even more "mysterious"—just like the film's own complex, even surreal nature.

At its core, the film is a twisting love story. The protagonist, Asako, is left heartbroken when her lover, Baku, mysteriously disappears. Two years later, Asako meets a man, Ryohei, who looks strikingly similar to Baku, and they fall in love. But when Baku suddenly reappears, Asako is torn and must make a choice. While the film seems to focus on the closed emotional world of these three characters, it’s impossible to ignore the clear social reference to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake that appears midway through the film. This is the only instance of an "external force" in the narrative.

It’s evident that Masahiro Higashide, who plays both Baku and Ryohei, becomes a shared signifier, representing Asako's past and present. Asako first meets Baku at a photography exhibition. The camera gives a close-up of Asako as she views a photo, while part of Baku's body appears in the background. The camera pulls back to show Asako turning her head to watch Baku walk away, then switches to follow Asako’s gaze as she secretly follows him into an elevator. The camera alternates between close-ups of Asako’s face and Baku’s back. Baku’s face never appears, emphasizing Asako as the one "looking" while Baku is "looked at."

A similar scene occurs when Asako first meets Ryohei. At the same photography exhibition, Ryohei sees Asako staring at a glass display. His shadow falls on the glass, and Asako turns quickly to look at him, reaching out to touch his cheek. This moment can be seen as Asako momentarily thinking Ryohei is Baku returning to her. Later, in a café, Ryohei and Asako’s friend chat while Asako gazes again at Ryohei’s shadow on the glass, before abruptly leaving.

These parallel scenes carry dual meanings. First, they clearly contrast Asako's active and passive roles in each relationship. Second, through her repeated gazes at Ryohei’s shadow—essentially a reflection of Baku—there's an implication that Asako is projecting her feelings for Baku onto Ryohei. This is why, despite Ryohei’s persistent pursuit, Asako repeatedly rejects him at first. Her past nightmare continues to haunt her, a trauma that only she can overcome.
After the earthquake, when the crowd evacuates, Asako again meets Ryohei, despite having previously told him, "Let’s not meet again." The camera focuses on Asako's shoes as she walks toward him. A similar close-up occurs when she first meets Baku, as his shoes approach her. In this moment, Baku’s "ghost" inhabits Asako’s body, making her both an active and passive, contradictory figure. Part of her desires to love Ryohei, but she’s still haunted by Baku. At this point, Asako is in a double-passive position: whether with Baku or Ryohei, she’s "controlled" by the trauma or by the love she passively accepts.

Five years later, despite being in a family with Ryohei, Asako still reaches out to Baku when he asks her to leave with him. The past trauma of "Baku’s sudden disappearance" has yet to be healed and still hurts.

There are many echoes between the two relationships, with details like photography exhibitions, hand-holding, and kissing. One important moment occurs when Asako asks, "Did we exit the freeway?" This question first happens when Asako and Ryohei return from a memorial event for the earthquake. Ryohei answers, "You keep sleeping, it’s fine." Later, during Asako and Baku’s "runaway," Baku answers, "I’m hungry and want to see the sea, so let’s stop here." The comparison between these two responses helps Asako make her decision: to choose Ryohei, who represents her present, rather than Baku, who represents her past. This is a moment of active choice for Asako, signaling her escape from the nightmare and her desire for healing.

The film’s trauma begins to heal from this point, as Asako regains her agency. Interestingly, the background music that first played during Asako and Baku's "fateful meeting" (the film's theme song composed by Tofubeats) reappears when Asako returns to Ryohei, symbolizing her active return to agency. As the English title Asako I & II suggests, the film centers on Asako’s choice—to say goodbye to her past and the nightmares it brings, and become a new Asako.

Looking back at the earthquake, this external, sudden force symbolizes a psychological trauma that disrupted the sense of safety in contemporary life. Eight years later, commemorative events are still held in Japan. Even five years after the disaster, Asako and Ryohei still regularly attend memorials, a form of trauma processing. In a way, Asako’s final choice to face the trauma of the earthquake with Ryohei represents her resistance to this sudden, unforeseen "trauma" and her desire for "healing."

The director uses—or perhaps "directs"—many natural elements in this film, such as the wind in Osaka’s fields, the sunlight as Asako chases Ryohei through the fields after her change of heart, and the sea and river, which symbolize the two relationships. The river is an important symbol for Asako and Ryohei’s relationship, and the film ends with a conversation as they gaze at the river outside their house. Ryohei says the river is "dirty," but Asako replies, "But it’s beautiful." This mirrors how Asako views her relationship with Ryohei—it may have flaws, but it’s full of new vitality. This metaphor also gives the film a "cult film" quality, clearly influenced by Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s mentor, American director John Cassavetes, and his film Love Streams (1984).

Additionally, at two photography exhibitions, Asako repeatedly gazes at a photo of twins, symbolizing the similarity between Baku and Ryohei. But it’s also Asako’s own nightmare that creates a twin-like relationship between them. In fact, Baku and Ryohei are not similar in appearance, personality, or occupation (in the original novel, only Asako feels they resemble each other—her friends don’t notice this, which is a detail sadly not retained in the film). This points to another American film, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, in which the male protagonist creates an evil illusion of the female protagonist (a threatening female figure) and releases his anxiety by uncovering a crime—an active process. In this film, this process is re-enacted as Asako’s "female gaze." Her nightmare creates the illusion (seeing Ryohei as Baku and vice versa), and it’s only when she notices a detail that’s both the same and different (Ryohei’s patience versus Baku’s selfishness) that she wakes up from the nightmare.