It has been more than two decades since Takeshi Kitano, Naomi Kawase, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hirokazu Kore-eda began collecting major festival invitations and prizes as the leaders of Japanese cinema¡¯s 1990s new wave. Since then younger directors have struggled to crack this ¡°4K¡± establishment to gain international recognition as auteurs, not just cult favorites. (Hayao Miyazaki looms over the competition in a similar way in the world of anime.)
One filmmaker who recently managed this feat ¡ª if a Cannes competition invitation for his offbeat romantic drama ¡°Asako I & II¡± is any indication ¡ª is 39-year-old Ryusuke Hamaguchi. A graduate of the University of Tokyo who studied filmmaking at Tokyo University of the Arts, Hamaguchi started his ascent when his graduation film, ¡°Passion,¡± was selected for the 2008 Tokyo Filmex festival. His breakthrough then came with ¡°Happy Hour¡± (2015), a five-hour-plus workshop piece that won an armload of awards, including best actress prizes for its four leads at the Locarno festival in Switzerland.
Based on a novel by Tomoka Shibasaki, ¡°Asako I & II¡± is about a woman (Erika Karata) who falls for two radically different men who look exactly alike (and are both played by Masahiro Higashide). It saw a mixed, though mainly positive, reception at Cannes in May, but left without a prize.
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