Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

Director: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Starring: 
Distributor: Potential Films
Runtime: 121 mins. Reviewed in May 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Sexual themes

Three short stories, Japanese setting, testing relationships among 20 somethings, then on a university campus and, finally, two women who meet after many years.

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, the Japanese writer-director, may not be a name on every filmgoer’s lips. However, his Oscar-winning Drive My Car has been seen and acclaimed all around the world. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is the film he made before Drive My Car. And it won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2021. Many audiences will be eager to see this film.

And it runs for 121 minutes, an hour shorter than Drive My Car and, it contains three episodes, three short stories, not linked by characters but rather by themes of relationships.

In many ways, the director’s style of filmmaking is straightforward, unfussy, direct, a great deal of dialogue, talking heads, the drama communicated by the performances, the strength and content of the dialogue, judicious editing so that audience interest is maintained in each of the characters.

But, audiences may be wondering during the first story, ‘Magic (or Something Less Assuring)’, as it opens with a young model at a photo shoot but then spends 10 minutes with the model and her friend sitting in a taxi talking. They are discussing relationships, attraction, sharing and communication. The next part of the film is also conversation, this time the young woman going to visit her ex-boyfriend who is the man who has charmed her friend from the taxi. The model is wilful, petulant, not afraid to hurt people. He, on the other hand, is enigmatic, hostile, yet still in love. And then the woman turns up at the apartment, having left her laptop behind! Discussions and explanations.

There is an unexpected twist at the end of this story as the two women sit in a restaurant talking about the experience – and the man walks past and sees them. The director uses the device to test just where our sympathies lie and what might happen.

The second story is ‘The Open Door’. A university professor very cautious about propriety, encounters a young man who is literally on his knees begging for some help for his career and being refused. Later, a young married woman who is in relationship with the young man, but admires the professor and his new novel, arrives to get his autograph, reads some of his rather laboriously explicit texts, at tries to trap him. Once again, there is quite a dismaying twist and the characters seen five years later. Deviousness in relationships.

The third story – Once Again – is somewhat plainer. Two women recognise each other as they pass on escalators, and then catch up, one accompanying the other to her home. As they talk we learn something of the life of each of them, the occasion of a 20-year high school reunion. But, complications arise – leading to some role-plays, highlighting how illuminating a role-play can be for both participants. The experience has been significant for the two women and the final scene makes us wonder where it will go.

Audiences will respond differently to each of the stories, but each has its own merit – good quality dialogue, the interest in relationships, twists of fate.

Three short stories written by the director– who then went on to enlarge several short stories into a three hour-long story in Drive My Car.