Wheel of For­tune and Fan­ta­sy – first-look review

The inter­na­tion­al fes­ti­val cir­cuit took some time to catch on to Japan­ese film­mak­er Ryû­suke Ham­aguchi. His first few fea­tures most­ly played domes­tic fes­ti­vals until Hap­py Hour, an ambi­tious dra­ma about four mid­dle-class women in their thir­ties, saw him break out inter­na­tion­al­ly in 2015. His next film, Asako I & II, which fol­lows a woman falling for two dif­fer­ent men who look alike, com­pet­ed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2018.

Wheel of For­tune and Fan­ta­sy finds itself sim­i­lar­ly promi­nent­ly placed in the main com­pe­ti­tion of the Berlin Film Fes­ti­val. 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. While the director’s pre­vi­ous films sprawled nov­el­is­ti­cal­ly, this new one, which is more inti­mate and con­fined in focus, feels more like a col­lec­tion of short stories.

Ham­aguchi again focus­es most­ly on women, many of whom share uncan­ny sim­i­lar­i­ties or mir­ror each oth­er. Each of the sto­ries involves some kind of coincidence.

In the tumul­tuous first sec­tion, Meiko (Kotone Furukawa) realis­es mid­way through a dis­cus­sion that the man (Kotone Furukawa) her friend Tsug­u­mi (Hyun­ri) is describ­ing an ear­ly-stage roman­tic encounter with is her ex-boyfriend. The sec­ond sec­tion sees stu­dent lovers Nao (Kat­su­ki Mori) and Sasa­ki (Shouma Kai) hatch a sedi­tious plan to try to entrap their uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Segawa (Kiy­ohiko Shibukawa). And in the third and most mov­ing part, Nat­suko (Fusako Urabe) cross­es paths with an old friend (Aoba Kawai) of sorts, send­ing them both spi­ralling back through their shared and sep­a­rate pasts.

Through­out the film, lit­tle is as it first seems; each encounter reach­es a dif­fer­ent point than is ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed, and no soon­er are the dynam­ics of a giv­en scene estab­lished than Ham­aguchi clev­er­ly dis­rupts them, drop­ping in new nar­ra­tive infor­ma­tion that shifts the mean­ing of the encounter and how the char­ac­ters involved have come to under­stand each other.

This gen­tle unpre­dictabil­i­ty is key to the film’s effec­tive­ness. With sce­nar­ios that most­ly involve two actors engag­ing in inti­mate exchanges with­in fixed spaces, the film can feel a lit­tle stage-like at times, but equal­ly this grace­ful the­atri­cal­i­ty is some­thing that seems indica­tive of the director’s grow­ing con­fi­dence: his pen­chant for mod­esty and restraint sur­faces as a lack of flashi­ness and a com­fort with subtlety.

Long takes are peri­od­i­cal­ly employed, and the com­po­si­tions and block­ing of the actors are con­sis­tent­ly pre­cise and unob­tru­sive, forc­ing the view­er to focus on the core dra­mat­ic strength of a script which is emo­tion­al­ly nuanced and often very fun­ny. What is accu­mu­la­tive­ly con­veyed is a well-attuned sense of the role that per­for­mance plays in all social inter­ac­tions, the micro­scop­ic shifts in under­stand­ing that occur as two indi­vid­u­als try to nav­i­gate a nascent rela­tion­ship that is evolv­ing based upon what is cur­rent­ly known and what has not yet been uncov­ered or disclosed.

As a film­mak­er who has dis­played a steady pro­fi­cien­cy in depict­ing the com­plex­i­ties of rou­tine inter­per­son­al dynam­ics, Ham­aguchi is well pre­pared to exploit this nar­ra­tive ter­ri­to­ry. While he may not be stretch­ing him­self exact­ly, the sit­u­a­tions he con­jures, probes and plays with in this film are a joy to watch unfold.