Much like author Haruki Murakami—whose short story “Drive My Car” provided the basis for the filmmaker’s other (outstanding) movie being released this year—Japanese director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi is clearly a hopeless romantic at heart, making films about people afraid of falling in love, or too ashamed to face its consequences. Both artists’ works also frequently feature doubles and doppelgangers as symbolic motifs—Hamaguchi’s film “Asako I & II,” broken up into two parts, wherein a woman falls instantly in love with two men who look identical but have radically disparate personalities and demeanors. Mistaken (or misrepresented) identity is a central component to all 3 short films that make up Hamaguchi’s anthology project, “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” winner of Berlinale’s 2021 Grand Jury Prize.
Whimsical and poignant but never wretchedly disconsolate, the movie bills itself as being made up of ‘short stories’ and ‘episodes’ (both being used in the title cards), and while ‘Wheel’ certainly plays well as a narrative trinity, ultimately, it doesn’t feel designed to be presented as a singular vision, but rather something resembling a trio of Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo’s more micro-sized exercises (i.e., “Grass,” “The Day After”) strung together for a triple feature. The snow-white title cards and gliding piano suite between segments also aids in adding to the resemblance.
Like Hong, Hamaguchi is acutely interested in honing in on tiny details which may have unknowable impact, characters crisscrossing in spaces—physical and cosmic—on a level so consciously devoted to the repercussion of sending one misread intimate signal that a whole life could change because of it. Playing like a series of mini plays featuring almost solely two players—whether in the backseat of a car or a café restaurant—the first short film, sporting the great title “Magic (Or Something Less Assuring)“, follows two close friends, Gumi (Hyunri) and Meiko (Kotone Furukawa), the latter of whom comes to a realization that her bestie’s new “player” boyfriend, Kazu is an ex she cheated on.
After hearing from Gumi all about how fantastic her new hubby is and how long it took him to get over her, Meiko confronts Kazu in an effort to win back his affections yet struggles to commit to doing so at the expense of her friend. The first segment is likely the weakest of the 3, but it’s still a more surprising and affective narrative than most Hollywood film you’ll see this year, its opulent nighttime photography featuring eye-catching long lens close ups of out of focus street light spheres in the rearview mirror as a pair of women in an unforeseen love triangle converse with each other about the “hottie” in question.
The second short, “Door Wide Open,” ups the dramatic intensity, almost nearing Asghar Farhadi-level impermissible outcome territory. After being wrongly disciplined and socially humiliated by one of his professors, Segawa (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), resentful student Sasaki (Shouma Kai) sees an opportunity to enact grand vengeance after his teacher’s first novel wins a prestigious literary prize (“He killed my future so I wanna return the favor”). Convincing a friend he fools around with on the side, Nao (Katsuki Mori) to try and lure him into a public sex scandal. The “honeytrap” scene —as Sasaki calls it—is a masterclass in direction, so palpably, vulnerably erotic that you begin to feel as though you’re sitting in the center of a live performance, the evolving dialog baring lust and shame in a manner that’s knowingly literary in an intensely maudlin way but feels wholly truthful and never cheap or exploitative in its foreboding titillation.
The final story “Once Again,” has the simplest and perhaps the most sorrowful set-up (despite having a slight COVID inspired, sci-fi bend to it) but it’s also startlingly warm, an affably snug closing chapter and statement. Misidentifying a woman, Aya (Aoba Kawai), at a high school reunion, believing her to be her first lover, Natsuko (Fusako Urabe) is gob smacked, and in denial, when the person she remembers giving her heart to turns out to not even remember her name. Sharing in opening up about the pains of her heartbreak, Natsuko is given an impossible opportunity to say all she’s wanted to say to the face that caused her unfathomable hurt when Aya offers to role play as her lost ex. Deciding to embrace needed fantasy instead of wallowing in the indecisively uncertain forever, Natsuko seeks to reciprocate the favor, realizing that each of them has enough care inside to fill the abyss inside the other that feels sorely lacking.
“We caressed each other through our conversation,” Gumi tells her friend, about her ex, during ‘Wheel’s first segment. Mutual mistakes creating a spark of connection, understanding the link between compulsory desire and the need for belonging and/or ownership, as Hamaguchi’s movie indicates, consideration is key when romantic destiny is an ever-moving crossroads. Not knowing how much one action, or a moment of indecision, can impact one person’s whole life, or the larger world around you, all because of one small feeling we can’t quite make sense of, is humankind’s global fortune. Thankfully romantic moments can touch us enough that we eventually move past emptily dolling out the word ‘empathy’ whenever we accidentally hurt someone, and get around to enacting real compassion for one another, by being conscious of cosmic love’s mystifyingly consequences. [B+/A-]
“Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” is in select theaters now.