a heartfelt starter pack of twenty sad girls in love • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

Asako I & II (2018)

Any Ryusuke Hamaguchi feature hits with the force of an emotional hurricane, but it’s Asako I & II that best fits today’s brief: the story of lovelorn Asako, a young woman living in Osaka, who falls in love with Baku. But what happens when he disappears? Two years later, Asako has moved to Tokyo, and she meets another man, Ryohei, who looks just like her lost love. Lena praises the film’s push and pull between “the instinctive rush of young love, thrilling, dangerous and impossible to preserve” and “the discomforting adjustment to more calm, but respectful, comforting and honestly communicative romance” while Ji asks, “Must loving be a museum of faults and bruises?” it’s a valid question, and one answered by Erika Karata, who captures Asako’s dissatisfaction and constant searching as a young woman in love. The film builds towards what Esther describes as “how it feels to be a girl who caused all of her own problems”. Time to queue up ‘the cure’, perhaps.