Yasutomo Chikuma might not be a name that many cinema lovers know, he has steadily built a reputation for himself with his socially conscious films at film-festivals and in arthouse-film circles. All his films seek to critically analyse problems and tragedies that remain hidden within the societal field. Now, I… (2008) explored the tension between subject and Other via the social phenomenon of the hikikomori. The Ark in the Mirage (2016), on the other hand, explores the social problem of exploitation of the elderly. His third feature, As It Flows (2023), reaffirmed Chikuma’s preoccupation with the subjective effects of disconnection and alienation within contemporary society.
His fourth feature film, The Deepest Space In Us, is no different. Once again, he puts the emphasis on the ravage caused by societal ideals and the difficulty of bringing one’s subject in play with respect to another subject. Chikuma’s The Deepest Space In Us follows Kaori Watanabe (Momoko Fukuchi), a young woman whose abusive past is linked with her abandonment of the field of ‘love, sexuality, and romance’ and radical imprisoning of her libidinal reality, and Takeru Suzuki (Kanichiro), a lawyer whose own wish to reject ‘subjective’ things led him to focus on cases where the recipient wishes to waive his/her inheritance (General-note 1).
One day, Takeru, after being brushed off by Shingo Nakano (Ryutaro Nakagawa), a famous author who was his best friend in the past – “Stay Away from me!”, happens to recognize Kaori, whom he helped with her inheritance problem. He leaves the building without talking to her, but is approached by her when he, due to a sudden intensification of anxiety, sinks down on a nearby bench. This encounter blossoms into a minimal bond between the two – a promise to stay together that eventually leads to their engagement. Yet, their bond is radically cut when Takeru commits suicide.
The spectator might wonder why we, in contrast to other reviews and articles, have chosen to avoid utilizing the signifiers a-romantic and a-sexual to introduce Kaori. We felt that the mere use of these signifiers at the beginning of our review/analysis would blind the spectator to what is truly at stake in Kaoru’s case – certain terms, by sounding self-explanatory, end up blinding the spectator for they fact that they explain little to nothing.
For Kaori, phallic enjoyment, whether aroused in the other’s or her own body, has attained a threatening and downright unnerving quality. As pleasure is, generally, put into practice within a relational setting – a subject utilizes another subject to arouse pleasure, she can only defend herself by keeping the libidinal reality of the other physically at bay and ensure that her own libidinal reality does not manifest itself. The avoidance of pleasure is elegantly signalled in the way she brings the signifier into play – she stays at the level of rational objectivity and dismisses any appeal the Other makes on her subjectivity.
The short sequence at the dancing club seemingly puts this reading into question. However, Kaori’s ability to dance seductively in front of Takeru Suzuki should be read as a social deceit – a mere presenting to the other what she believes he wants to see – i.e. sexual desire. Put in this way, we can see that her dancing has the same ‘imitating/performative’ function as her kissing – the kissing that preceded the failure to come to the sexual act with Takeru.
Via Takeru Suzuki, the spectator is introduced to the idea that there are certain signifiers we inherit from the parental Other that we can not waive nor reject, even though we try to. We are the product of the speech of the Other, of being subjected to the Other’s signifiers. The ego and the unconscious find their origin in this bath of signifiers the Other thrusted us in and the way we ‘chose’ to relate to these imposed signifiers – acceptance, alienation, repression. The failure to repress these signifiers lies in the fact that they, forming our unconscious, always find a way to signal their presence, always create a gap to echo their existence.
It is by receiving these signifiers from the Other that our fundamental phantasy comes into existence. This phantasmatic frame does not only enable the subject to develop our ego and organizes his unconscious, but forms the prerequisite for subjective turmoil, for the signifiers of the Other – the signals of his ideals and expectations – to sort such a destabilizing impact. It should be evident that the defining impact of Other, an impact that structures all his subsequent dealing with this Other, underpins Takeru’s inability to forget someone – “I want to forget but it’s impossible”, fuels his continued attempts at repress his sexual reality, and ultimately causes him to perform his suicidal act. This bond with the Other – we cannot do without the Other – also plays an important role in Kaori’s inability to engage in sexual acts or, in more general terms, to enter the field of enjoyment (Psycho-note 1).
Kaori and Takeru’s relationship might seemingly have started with an inkling of mutual acceptance, but is ultimately radically defined by misrecognition, by a concatenation of missed-encounters. Takeru, who is constantly at work to silence his unresolved struggle, to silence what does not let itself be silenced, keeps producing moments of deflection and misrecognition, moments where he, with brutal silence, flees from Kaori’s subjectivity (Psycho-note 2). By not being able to install a fictional frame of love, their bond can only be qualified as two subjects who all-alone wander together. They expose, in a radical manner, the non-existence of The sexual relationship.
Kaori’s attempt to elucidate the subjective necessity of Takeru’s suicide starts from the realisation that he, while psychically present, always realized himself as a subjective absence – his deepest space never finding its expression with enunciated signifiers. Or, to reformulate Kaori’s words, she seeks answers because she could not get any grasp on his subjectivity, on his deepest space. However, we must immediately emphasize that Takeru’s deepest space is something that escaped him as well – this space remains opaque to the subject. Having said this, we can only frame Kaori’s explorative search as a search for some signifiers to craft a narrative that might enable her to put a lid on Takeru’s gaping void, to close this gaping hole off with a fabrication of understanding and place the puzzling event of his death – Why did he die? – behind her.
The deepest space in us – that what escapes us, yet defines our logic in the societal field – is an ‘extimate’ element that ensures that two subjects always miss each other. We escape ourselves; we escape the other – Otherness is a site we avoid; a site we do not seek to enter. The solemn feeling of acceptance that defines the finale of The Deepest Space In Us echoes this uncomfortable truth while underlining that our passion of not-wanting-to-know, a passion fuelled by the societal demand for harmony, underpins many ravages and subjective tragedies.
In The Deepest Space In Us, Chikuma also touches with upon the inherent difficulty of introducing asexuality and aromantic to the Other, as he/she automatically takes these signifiers to put his own his/her own desirability into question. They receive Kaori’s signifiers within the phallic circuit of sexual desire that defines them, while she aims to underline that she fails to make herself function within this circuit.
The composition of The Deepest Space In Us has a restrained visual rhythm as Chikuma shows a preference for long or longer takes. Throughout his narrative, Chikuma returns to a simple set-up: put the camera somewhere within the space to create room for his cast to breathe, with the delivery of signifiers and the manipulation of their physical presence, life into their respective characters and the relational dynamics they are subjected to.
Chikuma seeks to exploit such moments to emphasize the naturalism of the performance and to give the expressed emotions within his film a genuine feel. However, the reason why this compositional approach works is solely due the performances, due to the way Momoko Fukuchi and Kanichiro rise up to every challenge given by the director to bring, through speech and act, their character captivatingly to life.
His narrative spaces, as can be easily noticed by the spectator, are marked by a certain softness. This visual softness is function of the thoughtful use of depth-of-field and the subtle play with overexposure and diffuse lighting. This softness does not only create a pleasant visual feel, but also increase the elegance of the director’s thoughtful shot-compositions, of the many atmospheric shots of scenery.
With The Deepest Space In Us, Yasutomo Chikuma offers a film that is not easily digestible – and rightly so. He seeks to confront the spectator with the idea that the irresolvable conflict between subject and (m)Other – the way the Other, as representative of the societal field, deals with the subject’s Otherness – creates the prerequisite from subjective turmoil in later life. Chikuma, moreover, utilizes his atmospheric blend of intimacy and alienation to assert that the societal field will always fail the Otherness of its subjects and, more importantly, that the deepest space in us is something that continually escapes us.
Notes:
General-note 1: We hope that the spectator notices that we refrain from exploring the causality of asexuality nor aim to delve into the complexity of it. We do, however, feel that Chikuma, within his narrative, shows that problematic experiences with the (m)Other and her abusive enjoyment can function as a kind of aggravator, transforming the mere lack of sexual desire into a subjective inability – the bursting forth of anxiety – to engage in the sexual act.
Psycho-note 1: It is implied that Takeru’s approach to work – an approach that sees him constantly filling his mind with work-related stuff, is one of the mechanisms by which he tries to defend against that what keeps surfacing in his conscious mind, the subject he cannot forget and the sexual reality he cannot accept.
Psycho-note 2: One could argue, in the case of Takeru, that he does not simply run away from the other as subject, but from the echo of himself within the other that faces him.