Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Running time: 2hr1 | REVIEWED BY GUY LODGE
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a somewhat kitsch English-language title for a lovely, serene zephyr of a film by Japanese writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. The original Japanese title translates, more simply and evocatively, as “Coincidence and Imagination” — wording that conveys not just the propelling narrative forces of a film heavy on chance encounters, mistaken identities and romantic flights of fancy, but the casual, quotidian poetry of its ample dialogue. If you’re a relative newcomer to Hamaguchi’s work, this triptych of gently humane, wistful short stories is an ideal, approachable introduction; if you’re a seasoned fan, its bittersweet emotional tenor and elegant, shuffling structure distil Hamaguchi’s charms in relative miniature. (At two hours, it’s positively bijou beside the intimate-epic epic running times of previous films like Drive My Car and Happy Hour.)
In each of its three separate but complementary vignettes, a host of initial complicating characters and circumstances gradually give way to intensive, circuitous two-person conversation — the lifeblood of Hamaguchi’s filmmaking, here rolling easily and thoughtfully across such subjects as shared memory, isolated heartbreak and the complex, compromised politics of courtship. In the first part, “Magic (or Something Less Assuring),” a young woman chatters cheerily with her best friend about the latter’s new lover, though talk of the dream man only triggers her own regrets over unfinished business with an ex. In “Door Wide Open,” a mature student is talked into seducing her esteemed former professor, though their encounter opens up a more sinuous, ambiguous rapport.
That sense of subverted expectations rolls over into the film’s gorgeous conclusion, “Once Again,” in which two former high school classmates run into each other and reminisce together in halting fashion — their attempts to bond over the past only revealing a disconnect in what they recall and how. Dusted oh-so-lightly with lo-fi science fiction, “Once Again” brings about its reunion as the characters pass each other on opposite escalators in a train station. It’s a potential meet-cute cliché that instead serves as the film’s lyrical defining image, encapsulating the tension between human connection and isolation that powers all these strange, splintered encounters. In Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, everyone’s both passing through each other’s lives and on their own fated trajectory.
WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY (GÛZEN TO SÔZÔ) (2021) Written by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi | Shot by Yukiko Iioka
In cinemas now.