Uncanny Doublings and Asian Rituals in Recent Films by Monika Treut, Doris Dörrie, and Ulrike Ottinger

This article aligns Monika Treut’s Ghosted (2009), Doris Dörrie’s Cherry Blossoms (2008), and Ulrike Ottinger’s The Korean Wedding Chest (2009) to inquire how these three films represent through their Asian setting the journey of self-exploration via the exotic Other. The formal and thematic device of doubling or copying, including in Treut and Dörrie the topics of haunting and mourning, raises the question of where the uncanniness of the romantic doppelgänger resides in an age of global travel and the postmodern simulacrum. If the Freudian uncanny is defined as something intimately known that suddenly becomes alien and strange, how does one still encounter the familiar in one’s voyage to distant lands with their foreign customs? How does Asian ritual, prominent in all three films, feature to make strange Western convention?