Japanese tale an engrossing, near-hypnotic watch
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (M, 121 mins)
Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★★
In Japanese with English subtitles
In a world more concerned with truth and beauty than this one, Ryusuke Hamaguchi would perhaps be a household name. It is wonderful, to me at least, that his Drive My Car found an audience here, and that interest in Wheel Of Fortune and Fantasy might be piqued as a result.
And, nicely for any newcomers and perhaps as a quiet relief to the rest of us, Wheel Of Fortune and Fantasy is actually a more accessible, easier to digest and – at two hours, compared to Drive My Car’s three – a slightly easier commitment to make.
Wheel is an anthology film. It is composed of three vignettes, each around 40 minutes, give-or-take, each led by a woman protagonist.
The three stories are superficially unrelated. They feature different events, characters and settings. And yet, they are linked thematically and tonally by happenstance, by conversation and by the ways in which women and men communicate – spoken or not.
The longest, second story – Door Wide Open – will be the most divisive, with its plot circling sexual power-plays and the complicity of the participants in even the most dishonest of transactions.
Anyone who saw Drive My Car will – I hope – already be intending to see Wheel Of Fortune and Fantasy. But for first-timers to Hamaguchi, there are delights in store for you here. These are contemplative stories and yet never solipsistic or indulgent.
Stuff happens, decisions are made and lives are irrevocably altered, although seldom in the ways the players hoped or intended. Lovers are found and lost. Memories are exhumed and rewritten. Regrets are put to bed and new ones are awakened.
Hamaguchi is an absolute master of dialogue and of actual conversation. The difference is not easily definable, but as you watch a couple of his characters interacting in a rumpled university office or the backseat of a car – with you perhaps more aware of what is being left unsaid than the people on the screen are – then you will know that you are watching something that is maybe as close to human truth as movies ever get.
Wheel Of Fortune and Fantasy (the original Japanese title would translate as ‘‘Coincidence and Imagination’’, which you might prefer) is an engrossing, nearhypnotic and always charming film. It is also a piercing, forensic and quietly heartbreaking sequence of quite beautifully wrought dramas.
Like the men and women who populate them, the chapters are separate, yet interlocked and wonderfully complementary.
You will not see many betterwritten, better-performed or more affecting films this year. Or any year. Hugely recommended.
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is now screening in select cinemas.