Can there be two people in the world who so exactly resemble each other but have entirely indifferent, interwoven fates? They say that if you meet your doppelgänger one of you will die, that the world cannot permit two such persons to live. Colors of Wind (風の色, Kaze no Iro), the second Japanese language film directed by The Classic’s Kwak Jae-yong is not sure about doppelgänger theory but is certifiably obsessed with dualities and most particularly in the way that they relate to romantic fulfilment and the necessary shifts in identity that it often entails.
In the present, the melancholy Ryo (Yuki Furukawa) has locked himself away for the past 100 days in mourning for his girlfriend who ghosted him and then apparently took her own life in snowy Hokkaido. Yuri (Takemi Fujii) had always had a kind of fragility about her, insisting that she’d soon “disappear” but that there was another girl who looked like her living in Hokkaido who was far happier and far cleverer than she would ever be. After she died and Ryo “cocooned” himself away, he wakes up and walks into his favourite restaurant only to find the old couple that ran it have retired and the place is reopening as a magic club. Not only that, the previous owners were keeping a suitcase for him which they instructed the new barman to pass on with the caveat that Ryo would probably not even remember that he left it there. The case turns out to be full of clues to a life a he never knew – pictures of a girl of who looks like Yuri, a diary, and a handful of other trinkets. Newly taken with the world of magic, Ryo trains himself to become a top magician before setting off for Hokkaido and encountering another Yuri, only calling herself Aya, who thinks that he is returned spirit of her former boyfriend Ryu – a magician who went missing during a complicated magic trick three years previously.
Colors of Wind hinges on the notion of love as the greatest act of magic, by which it presumably means something inexplicable and wondrous rather than an insincere act of ostentation. Love, it seems to say, fundamentally rewrites the identity of the lover but then again, if one is really “in love” perhaps “identity” in any real sense ceases to matter aside from a need for integration that allows the formation of a new self which can accommodate the extreme selflessness which true love requires.
Love as an act of transformation is a motif which recurs throughout. Grief-stricken, Ryo “cocoons” himself away for 100 days as if waiting to emerge as something else, a new man with a clean slate waiting for a new identity. Meanwhile, Aya continues to pine for her missing magician, half convincing herself that Ryo is Ryu while her mind fractures itself in wondering if her new love is a betrayal of her old. Unable to accommodate the romantic impurity of falling in love with two different men, albeit ones who look identical and have much more than that in common, Aya’s loves create two mutually exclusive souls doing battle for headspace while all Ryo can do is watch as he too battles ghosts on all sides, pining for Yuri while falling for Aya as she yearns only for Ryu.
As the magician behind the bar affirms, meeting one’s doppelgänger does not necessarily spell death – there are many ways for two of the same to survive if only you want to find them, but then love often requires a sacrifice and one thing must fall if another is to rise. These “dopplegängers” are of a more spiritual kind, souls which wander and must be brought home, but in order to love the self must be whole. To escape their cycles of melancholy rumination, the pair decide on new identities for their new love, pinching the roles of Leon and Mathilda from the classic hitman movie in an attempt to bid Aya/Yuri and Ryo/Ryu goodbye but a deeper integration of a more authentic self will be necessary for a concrete resolution, requiring a series of choices and selfless, altruistic love.
Shot entirely in Japan and with an entirely Japanese cast, Colors of Wind nevertheless has a recognisably Korean sensibility in its melancholy, philosophy-tinged melodrama which hinges on the ineffabilities of love and identity. Trapped and drowning, Ryo has to literally unchain his heart and open the door to his soul to let the love flood in but does so perhaps at a price, permitting another identity to merge with his own as he prepares to integrate past loves and new into one romantic whole. Beautiful, if occasionally obscure, Colors of Wind fully succeeds in Kwak’s goal of paying tribute to classic melodrama in its tale of love and sacrifice, self and selflessness, and the transformative qualities of romance, but does so with a playful heart as it takes in the picturesque snows of Hokkaido and the contrived charms of man made magic.
Original trailer (no subtitles)
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Windows on Worlds 