Asako is at a photography exhibition but can't take her eyes of a tall shaggy haired boy who breezes past the prints as though they're ads. She follows him out to the street. He turns and looks. There are actual fireworks going off but they don't need to as the metaphorical ones are cracking and flashing inside the two nervous systems that encounter each other on the street. After only an exchange of names and what the Kenji characters refer to the pair are kissing like long lost lovers. They are now inseparable, forming an embrace even on a road where their motorcycle accident has thrown them. Their more level headed friends enjoy the spectacle of the lovers and the adventurous cuteness they radiate. One night, he, Baku, says he's going to the shop, leaves and never returns.
Asako eventually leaves this scene in Osaka and travels to Tokyo, working in a coffee shop which delivers to clients that include a Sake label whose new recruit is Baku's doppelganger. Asako, retrieving the coffee jug is struck silent at the sight of this apparition, insisting on calling him Baku though he has clearly introduced himself as Ryohei. He is easy in his business suit and cleaner cut hair but her strange fascination with him throws him. Catching up with her on the street at a later occasion he is able to demonstrate so quick thinking charm to invert a negative situation and also allow him into her company.
He is not the bad boy Baku but he looks just like him and might well do as far as life partners go. They shack up and all seems well. You know this is doomed, don't you? Ok, but it's done well. An old friend from the Osaka days lunches with Asako and brings her up to date on what she's been up to but also, seeing with wide eyes, Asako's new love, can't help but fill her in on the fact that Baku has not just popped up again but famously. A rotating ad screen outside the restaurant obliges with the credit card commercial that Baku has become famous by starring in. So, the Baku/Ryohei thing is not just in her head, it's something that everyone else can see. This is not magical realism.
We wait for the moment when both doppelgangers are in the same moving picture. What will happen? The third act addresses this and it is not everything we might expect. The good news is that the characters themselves also appear genuinely surprised by it.
If overlong, Asako I & II does what it says on the tin. We are given a young and beautiful woman, her self-surprise at finding herself in love and a massive complication to deal with that. We are also given a beautifully crafted scene between an aspirant actor and a failed one on what acting ought to be. In a film whose riches are given in a generally lean degustation we are treated to a course too many or so it feels. This is writing rather than a young, beautiful and ready cast. And it is writing rather than a light hand on the beige aesthetics of the near-hipster Tokyo young.
What saves it is the commitment to the fairy tale purity of true love and the verite denial of such an ideal. Between them we have an antidote to the 500 Days of Summer but something that can't quite match Eternal Sunshine. If nothing else, it has piqued my interest in new Japanese cinema and its reliable ability to absorb, evolve and freshen.
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