This part of “Yi Yi” could stand alone as a short-film within the film. It’s an examination of how two people could want each other — with mutual love — but have incompatible goals.

The usual trick in a film is to make the central character the one who yearns with purpose and if something goes wrong in the love affair, for the object of the affection to be the reason it falls apart. “Yi Yi” inverts this. Sherry is, no doubt, the object of NJ’s desires.

But NJ is experiencing this romance as a bit of nostalgia and harmless flirtation. He observes rules. They go away for a trip to an old-fashioned resort town, out of season, the kind of place where couples used to go for their honeymoons when they couldn’t afford something more elaborate. They eat dinner in a massive hotel restaurant with no other guests. They go to the front desk and get two rooms — two keys — and joke about how the staff didn’t know what to make of their discretion.

It’s important here to stop and recognize the imbalance of effort that has taken place in this Tokyo trip. NJ is on a business trip and he did make the effort earlier to reach out and call Sherry. But she’s the one who dropped her life and immediately flew from Chicago to Tokyo to have a chance to be with him.

She is the one who brings up the past and her disappointment. We find out that Sherry once, when they were young, arranged for them to go to a love hotel, only for NJ to run away. And as they stand outside of her room, she shows more vulnerability — saying that every time she says goodnight, she worries that she’ll never see him again.

NJ winds down after this smoking quietly in the dark in his room. Sherry knocks on the door and takes it to another level — admitting that she’s thought about leaving her husband and wonders why she has any fear about starting something new. Her line echoes what Ota said earlier to NJ about fearing “first times.”

Sherry spills her heart out to NJ and he remains at a safe distance — leading her to explode, wondering if he ever really loved her at all. Then she self attacks, wondering why NJ always makes her feel this way.

He responds with lines that are true, but interesting also in their concealment. He says, twice, “who understands you better than me?” Yes, but who understands NJ at all? That’s the heart of the problem. What does he feel about Sherry? If he chose correctly in life, as the scene on the stairs indicated, then why does he return to her and put her through this heartache?

We get more beautiful scenes of longing and disconnection. The shot of NJ crouched down on a pier, the blue light in the distance, waves crashing around him, is pure poetry.

They return to Tokyo. NJ sleeps on the train home — he has a meeting with Ota when he returns, so this makes some sense. But Sherry stays awake, thinking.

It is only when they get back to their hotel in Tokyo, again with two more rooms and two more keys, and only after they had already said goodnight, when NJ finally says what he has always had in his heart.

He tells Sherry that he’s never loved another woman. And we know it’s true. But we also know that he’ll never act on it.

The scene ends with Sherry staring out into the Tokyo skyline crying. She has flown nearly halfway around the world to just revisit a heartbreak. Time and again, she has put herself in position for NJ to get close, then run away.

Now it is her time to flee.