#netemo sametemo

AIsako I & II

dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi

寝ても覚めても （2018）

‘That's the thing about you...’

‘Hmm?’

2018  寝ても覚めても

asako i & ii (寝ても覚めても, netemo sametemo, "whether asleep or awake") is a surreal romance about a woman who falls in love with two men with the same face. it was directed by ryusuke hamaguchi, who also directed drive my car.

the premise: asako (erika karata) falls in love with a mysterious young man called baku (masahiro higashide). one day, baku disappears. years later, in tokyo, asako sees him again. or, well, not him, but a young salaryman called ryohei (also masahiro higashide). they begin building a life together, until asako's past resurfaces.

(just some disorganized thoughts below. i tried to organize this but i gave up. i just want to get this out of me.)

point of view:

the first part of the movie (up to the title card, which shows up about twenty minutes in) is in asako's point of view. most of the movie is in ryohei's point of view, and then we switch back to asako's at about halfway through the movie.

asako kind of reminds me of hatsumi from the hot gimmick film adaptation. there's something opaque about them. both are quiet and innocent-looking. both of their respective films have shots of them where we view the heroine head on, eye-level, like in a mirror. both are played by young and inexperienced actresses (hot gimmick was miona hori's first feature film; asako i & ii was erika karata's second—her first came out the same year)

for asako, baku is the mystery, the manic-pixie-dream-girl-like character. for ryohei, when he first meets asako, asako is the inexplicable, confusing mystery. we know why asako is acting weird (because he reminds her of baku), but he doesn't.

the novel this is based on is entirely in first person (in asako's point of view, i think)

similarities to drive my car:

chekov

spaciousness, a slice-of-life feel

both movies are somehow both contrived and naturalistic

contrived: fate and coincidences (in this movie: the whole doppelganger scenario, the way asako and ryohei run into each other) (in drive my car: things like how the driver's age is the same as what the male lead's daughter's age would have been)

naturalistic: slow, realistic moments (in this movie: there's a shot of a side character just misting plants. the aftermath of the earthquake. also moments like asako giving ryohei a massage.) (in drive my car: the driver, misaki, waiting with a book, or leaving a grocery store...)

the title of the movie:

the japanese title and the english title are different

sleeping and waking (asako's monologue near the end of the movie)

the two asakos

which two asakos?

when is she asleep and when is she awake?

before and after baku? before and after baku comes back? before and after she comes back to ryohei?

trivia, re: names:

asako's name - asa for morning - the title "sleeping/waking"

baku's last name, torii, means "bird" - he might fly away at any moment

appearance, the body:

supporting character haruyo's plastic surgery

identity and how much of your identity is your body and how you look

the superficiality of attraction

how weird it must feel to think that someone might like you just for your face (even though that's not at all the case for ryohei and asako)

i was reading denial of death, and it said a lot of stuff about the body, and how people don't want to be just their bodies, because being your body means death, because your body will die... and how ryohei doesn't want to just be reduced to his (baku-like) face.

dreams vs reality, the other vs the mundane, baku and ryohei as representatives, magical realism:

we don't understand why asako likes baku. except i want to say that it's not female hypergamy. or it's not just female hypergamy. can we acknowledge that people do things because they're human and have human weaknesses, but also because of like... idk, special personal reasons? i think asako has plenty of special personal reasons for her weird behavior. even if we aren't explicitly told about them.

baku as a manic pixie dream girl like character. (catalyst for asako's ... change?)

love as a curse on asako.

baku doesn't feel human sometimes. he seems like. like a fairy maybe. manic pixie dream guy. the way he suddenly disappears and reappears. the detached, nonchalant way he speaks. baku is like a dream. there's an unreality to him. the scenes where asako and baku are together... similarly don't feel real, and have a dreamlike quality to them. the whole entire intro scene (the eighteen minutes before the title card) with baku seems like a flashback. the slow-motion in some scenes, the music.

there's this sense of inequality almost? like how haruyo says that asako isn't the kind of woman someone would fall in love with at first sight. and yet asako immediately, with baku, falls in love at first sight. how baku will leave at any time and asako will be waiting for him to come back. how asako is shown as... chasing after him. sometimes? like he's there, unseeable and unknowable, and asako's unable to reach him. also foreshadowing of asako's abandonment by baku (haruyo saying baku is a heartbreaker, etc).

the abandonment is an open loop (open wound?)

ryohei is a real guy. we know him better than we know baku. we see asako's life with him. their shared time and shared efforts. their domestic life, their cat, the massage asako gives ryohei when they come home late at night.

ryohei speaks in kansai dialect (stereotype of immediacy, honesty), baku speaks in standard tokyo dialect (despite being from osaka) (distance, aloofness)

asako only really comes to terms with baku's disappearance when ryohei appears in her life.

asako seeks closure

the cat that asako and ryohei have. the cat as a symbol for their relationship.

on one hand, asako only falls in love with ryohei because he looks like baku. on the other hand, in an atemporal and acausal way, maybe asako only fell in love with baku so that she could fall in love with ryohei later.

asako running after people (men) or cats

the asako who is asleep, the asako who has woken up

asako is only able to truly choose ryohei after she's "awake"

random stuff:

the way the camera tracks feet walking, characters moving

there's a random scene where a sheet falls on baku and asako (in the beginning, honeymoon phase) and they kiss under it, like the lovers by magritte.

self and others - that's the name of the photography exhibition where she meets baku. and the photography exhibition that ryohei helps asako and maya get into, before asako and ryohei get to know each other. there's this really striking parallel where asako is looking at a certain photo, and baku or ryohei appear beside her in frame.

pregnancy and birth motif / revelation of the truth

doppelgangers, identical strangers

cell phones as a recurring element (breaking up via phone call, throwing away your phone to cut off communication, etc)

waking, sleeping

maya and kushihashi, talking about chekov and acting... "everybody does that" - everybody uses the audience to be the center of attention

Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)