Ryû­suke Ham­aguchi arranges a yearn­ing trip­tych in Wheel of For­tune and Fantasy

Revolver or Sgt Pepper’s. Cheers or Frasi­er. The God­fa­ther Part I or The God­fa­ther Part II. To the pan­theon of unset­tleable pop-cul­ture debates, let us add Wheel of For­tune and Fan­ta­sy or Dri­ve My Car.

No film­mak­er had a bet­ter 2021 than Ryū­suke Ham­aguchi, who direct­ed not one, but two of the year’s most effu­sive­ly acclaimed titles. State­side crit­ics have had his name on their lips a lot as awards sea­son has rolled on, but most of the hard­ware has gone to his length­i­er, per­haps more ambi­tious Haru­ki Muraka­mi adap­ta­tion Dri­ve My Car. For­tu­nate­ly, audi­ences in the UK will soon be able to take a look at the oth­er half of his dou­ble fea­ture, the aching three-part anthol­o­gy pic­ture Wheel of For­tune and Fantasy.

In the new trail­er exclu­sive­ly unveiled by LWLies, a trip­tych of long­ing the­mat­i­cal­ly links a col­lec­tion of lone­ly souls in search of a mean­ing­ful con­nec­tion. In the first seg­ment, a woman dis­cov­ers her best friend and ex are now dat­ing, and con­sid­ers fork­ing respons­es; then, an attempt­ed sab­o­tage turns into a frag­ile bond between a pro­fes­sor and his for­mer student’s mis­tress; final­ly, two strangers mis­take each oth­er for school chums, and won’t let the real­iza­tion of their mutu­al mix-up tar­nish the trust between them.

At the film’s pre­mière dur­ing last year’s Berli­nale, our man on the scene Matt Turn­er had praise with qual­i­fi­ca­tions, writ­ing in his review: ​“Con­sist­ing of a trio of inde­pen­dent sto­ries tied loose­ly by the theme of serendip­i­ty, the film dis­plays com­mon­al­i­ties with Hamaguchi’s most recent work, shar­ing many strengths if seem­ing some­what slighter by com­par­i­son.” He specif­i­cal­ly not­ed that ​“his pen­chant for mod­esty and restraint sur­faces as a lack of flashi­ness and a com­fort with subtlety.”

In a press con­fer­ence last year, Ham­aguchi stat­ed that the three parts com­pris­ing Wheel of For­tune and Fan­ta­sy will ulti­mate­ly be joined with four more shorts for a sev­en-film cycle, the scripts for which are now in devel­op­ment. We can only hope it won’t be too long until this emerg­ing mas­ter trans­ports us back to his uni­verse of fun­ny hap­pen­stance and bruis­ing melancholia.

Wheel of For­tune and Fan­ta­sy comes to cin­e­mas in the UK on 11 February.