Why do men chase women? Thirty-eight years ago, Rose Castorini (Olympia Dukakis) and Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) seemed to have settled the matter in “Moonstruck” (1987).
“Why would a man need more than one woman?!” Rose thundered. “I don’t know,” Johnny said quietly. “Maybe because he fears death.”
So forceful was Rose’s reply (“That’s it. That’s the reason!”) that infidelity could have been reasonably retired as a plot point then and there. Yet few filmmakers fail to be seduced by the dramatic possibilities of an extramarital affair—including, it turns out, Hirokazu Kore-eda.
One of contemporary Japanese cinema’s most illustrious humanists, Kore-eda makes movies about families: fathers, mothers, sisters, sons. Some of these clans are bound by tormented blood ties; others are torn asunder by uncaring societal forces, like the tragic thieves in 2018’s “Shoplifters.”
“Sometimes it’s better to choose your own family,” Nobuyo (Sakura Andô) muses in “Shoplifters.” Unfortunately, that’s not an option in “Asura,” Kore-eda’s new Netflix series about four sisters lovingly and irritably making the best of the father they’re stuck with.
At 70, Kôtarô Takezawa (Jun Kunimura) is an affably absentminded dad who can’t remember to put out a cigarette, yet never forgets to pay a visit to his young mistress and her son—a betrayal that sickens his children, but impresses a random local cop (“A lover at 70, huh?” he asks admiringly).
Kôtarô’s daughters—Tsunako (Rie Miyazawa), Makiko (Machiko Ono), Takiko (Yû Aoi), and Sakiko (Suzu Hirose)—are alarmed not only by their father’s infidelity, but by their mother, Fuji (Keiko Matsuzaka), quietly bearing the burden of her husband’s betrayal.
“Once a woman acknowledges it, she loses,” Fuji tells Makiko, who understands because she’s being cheated on by her husband, Takao (Masahiro Motoki). Their implicit bargain? Excruciating silence in exchange for deadening stability.
One of the only characters in “Asura” who rejects that choice is Takiko, who begins dating Mr. Katsumata (Ryûhei Matsuda), a private detective. “I’m interested in someone,” Mr. Katsumata says gently, meaning Takiko. “A kind person.” He is a rare breed in “Asura”: an honest man.
Kore-eda clearly has a soft spot for Mr. Katsumata (the honorific is always attached to his name), but he isn’t afraid to empathize with self-deluded liars like Takao (whose stylishly oversized spectacles contrast with Mr. Katsumata’s comically uncool sunglasses).
Defending his father-in-law’s affair (and, by extension, his own), Takao tells Makiko, “He worked hard to put a roof over your head and raised four children to adulthood. Then, in his final days, he tried to have a little fun. Is that really so bad?”
On the page, those words read as unthinkably cruel, but the roughness of Takao’s voice radiates both defiance and desperation. “All I’m saying is that men’s feelings don’t obey logic,” he insists, offering a justification so weak that it almost sounds like a cry for help. Patriarchy is poison, even to a patriarch.
Set in Tokyo in 1979, “Asura” is based on Kuniko Mukōda’s novel “Ashura no Gotoku,” which was first adapted for television by Mukōda herself (she later died on Far Eastern Air Transport Flight 103, which crashed in Taiwan).
Since Mukōda’s death, multiple filmmakers have felt the story’s gravitational pull and earned acclaim when they succumbed. Yoshimitsu Morita’s “Like Asura” (2003) won three Japan Academy Prizes, while Kore-eda’s “Asura” was hailed as “the best Netflix drama in years” by The Guardian.
That’s a dubious compliment for a series that’s soulful by Netflix standards and soap operatic by Kore-eda standards. While Kore-eda made an improbably subtle film about two boys switched at birth (2013’s “Like Father, Like Son”), the melodramatic suds of “Asura” aren’t so easily scrubbed by a director’s tender touch.
After the third episode, I felt as if I’d watched a warmly entertaining three-hour film; after the seventh, I felt Kore-eda struggling to corral an incident-prone narrative that features two weddings, two fires, two boxing matches, and two suicide attempts.
“Asura” overflows with wonderful scenes (my favorite is Takiko and Mr. Katsumata flirting by writing on steamed glass). It lacks only the time to let us luxuriate in them, the way we did in “Shoplifters” when Kore-eda lingered on a beach scene to let us hear an old woman whisper two words (“Thank you”).
Which reminds me: I want to thank Kore-eda for one particular shot in “Asura” that allows the series’ estranged factions—women and men, parents and children, old and young—to converge in a cemetery.
Here come the four sisters, clad in dark dresses and kimonos. Here come the men, wearing their somber suits like school uniforms. Here come Makiko and Takao’s children, leaping to touch the tree branches that grow above the cemetery like a leafy ceiling.
What hurts will be passed from one generation (or one gender) to the next? What absurdities? What joys? The abrupt ending of “Asura” leaves much to the imagination, but a conversation between Mr. Katsumata and Takiko’s father hints what might lie beyond the end credits.
“I don’t know if we intend to marry, but if we do…I’ll take care of her,” Mr. Katsumata says seriously. “I’ll never cheat on her as long as I live.”
When he hears this, the father laughs, doubled over in disbelief at the sight of a young man vowing to keep his word. It’s the laughter of a failed husband who finally realizes that his life isn’t a romance. It’s a joke, and his irrelevance is the punchline.
