Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021)

 

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Screenplay: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Cast: Kotone Furukawa as Meiko; Ayumu Nakajima as Kazuaki Kubota; Hyunri as Tsugumi Konno; Kiyohiko Shibukawa as Segawa; Katsuki Mori as Nao; Shouma Kai as Sasaki; Fusako Urabe as Moka Natsuko; Aoba Kawai as Nana Aya

Canon Fodder

 

What a difference time makes - when I had first encountered Ryusuke Hamaguchi, it was with the five plus hour film Happy Hour (2015);  that was a film a few outside of Japan knew about, those able to see it finding an incredible production whose length is used for its richness. Come the 2020s, and Hamaguchi started gaining an international recognition to his work, let alone before Drive My Car (2021), an adaptation of a Haruki Murakami involving a re-adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya for theatre. Not only had the film won the 94th Academy Awards Oscar for Best International Picture, but was nominated as well for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. CODA (2021), a film casting real deaf actors in roles, and about a child of deaf adults (CODA), and the awards became shadowed not by any of the films that won or did not, instead gaining a notoriety for actor Will Smith front palm slapping comedian Chris Rock on stage and on camera. Lost in an event like this, talked about in the media circus that resulted, are these films, such as CODA's place in depicting disability in mainstream cinema, and being a film originally for Apple TV+ on streaming, and Drive My Car likewise is significant.

In the past, non-English films especially in the sixties to seventies were nominated in the Best Picture category, such as Costa-Gavras' Z (1969) for the 42nd Academy Awards, but it was a significant shock suddenly a South Korean film, Bong Joon-ho's Parasite (2019), at the 92nd Academy Awards, became the first non-English language film to win Best Picture, but also Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film awards in the same night. When the Oscars showed bias to American and English language films over decades before, it was a startling, whatever your opinions on Parasite, that a wider eyeglass was being used by the Academy of cinema around the world. Now with Ryusuke Hamaguchi having an Oscar and a Best Picture nod, someone behind a five hour long film of great complexity like Happy Hour, the kind of film neglected in availability let alone appreciation, had more eyes towards him as a result of that awards ceremony success even in just nominations. The awards even beyond the Oscars won also means that the focus on his filmmaking as a director would become wider too, and beforehand, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy would be screened in British cinema from 11th February 2022¹ and still play into the same weekend as the Oscar ceremony took place on March 27th 2022, the night before in fact when I was able to see the movie.

Wheel..., in contrast to Drive My Car being a three hour narrative, Happy Hour five hours, is three short stories, like a short story collection, which have different characters and even mini-end credits for each of them. They however all tie together in their themes of accidental encounters and pure chance, the circumstances bringing people together coincidental but whose interactions bring great emotional resonance, even in one story people who realise they do not know each other and confused one another as people from their pasts in high school. The first narrative encapsulates this, Magic (or Something Less Assuring), where model Meiko (Kotone Furukawa) learns that her female friend has started a relationship with an ex-boyfriend she still has longing for. Hamaguchi's style within these three tales is minimalistic, in how the dialogue is in centre of priority, the rich and humoured script its actors brings to life onscreen. He seems to have gone to the school of Hong Sang-Soo, the famous South Korean filmmaker of dialogue, to borrow his abrupt camera zoom techniques, more in felt in how Hamaguchi's own within Wheel..., for heightened affect, has imperfectly completely zooms too instead of perfect glides.

All the stories, whilst the last two were my favourites, are exceptional, of a high quality about accidental circumstances which connect people. The first segment, returning to it, has the right tone to begin the trio, of how the lead Meiko still loves her ex Kazuaki (Ayumu Nakajima) and their initially combative reunion, in his work office, leads to a softening reflection on their pass and a new moral complexity as he is in a relationship with her friend. The conflict as the others takes place in the quieter areas of urban Japan - footways, offices - and seeing human beings within them. My inherent fascination I have with Japanese public spaces aesthetically is here, but is also contrasted, as with Hong Sang-Soo films in another culture, or Eric Rohmer in France when he depicted modern landscapes, with seeing human beings within these confines and modernity. For the most part the three narratives do not experiment in presentation, but they all possess their own distinct touches. Part one even, to follow the Hong Sang-Soo comparisons, has two alternative endings in how Meiko resolves the romantic triangle in a cafe, one clearly the true ending but the imagined an emotional wave which exposes emotional anxieties and the uncomfortable truth she realises is likely to happen is she tells the truth.

Part two, Door Wide Open, is the most complex of narratives. It envisions a young man Sasaki (Shouma Kai) bribing an older woman Nao (Katsuki Mori), a student in a friends-with-benefits relationship with him, with their sex life to set up a honey trap with French language teacher and newly successful novelist Segawa (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), a revenge act against the person who obstructed his career trajectory earlier in time at the moment Segawa has won the Akutagawa Prize, a real award which is significant in Japanese literature. The segment is my best of the trio - the most dynamic in chronology, jumping in the most timelines it is set in, the drama as it does become tragic but it is also incredibly comedic, weaving humour around a very erotic passage in Segawa's novel of tending to testicles like the broken wing of a bird. The novelist finds himself in the most curious of circumstances that would have won me over if it had stayed on an actual happy conclusion of abrupt love. One where even if drawn from a theory side still gives a woman with a little pride in just her voice, and happiness for everyone where a near-blackmail never ruins, all  as long as someone promises to masturbate to the resulting audio recordings. That it turns, due to a wrong email address, to a sadder but still complex ending, where people still have to live their lives in new circumstances after the fall out, does show Ryusuke Hamaguchi's deft hand nonetheless.

Unlike Happy Hour, which could flesh out its content in five hours, Wheel's narratives are short stories, characters dramas which are complex in their short spaces of time. More so with part three, Once Again, where an older woman Natsuko (Fusako Urabe) going to her high school reunion, passing on an escalator, encounters an old friend from that time, complicated by the pin drop perfect realisation late on, in the other's own home, that they are complete strangers. Frank in the previous stories, in their takes on erotic and romantic desire, it is Hamaguchi taking a risk when the narrative for the third story is with LGBTQ characters, its lead Natsuko initially meets older housewife Aya (Aoba Kawai) under the presumption she is the girl from her school days she was in a romantic relationship with.

Not only does the story tactfully depict this, but also the narrative has its own complexities, realising they neither know each other, as Aya thought Natsuko was also a classmate from her own school days she felt close towards. Deciding to impersonate those missing to the other for emotional closer, the film brings a special emotional complexity contrasted by a sweet, gentle calmness which ends Wheel...perfectly. Whilst timeless too in its drama, the interest in modernity means that, like Eric Rohmer's eighties films for me, you still see these timeless aspects of people within new contexts in all three stories. Part III also presents the strangest touch of the entire trio, which is never explicitly important to the narrative but is important enough to require an entire text crawl for its backdrop, which this is set in an alternative world. It is set in a period where a mass online incident revealed everyone's private details and emails, including important business/organisation information, leaving this a world where everyone has to communicate without computers and the internet for safety.

It adds its own curiosity, as this is the one drama which depicts the act of ordering anime blu-rays in the post and the curious site of overtly sexual moé anime character models on the shelves to be pondered upon by older women, but it adds a further sense for director-screenwriter Ryusuke Hamaguchi fleshing out the world in its touches. The result for all three narratives is a really good film in its entirety. Released the same year as Drive My Car, which will be the film talked of with the larger attention for its success and how it is talked of, the festival juries of the 71st Berlin International Film Festival still awarded Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize. Whilst that should not be the only way to gauge a film's virtues, Wheel... for me personally was everything I could hope for with a deliberately smaller scaled production. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy came out at the moment Ryusuke Hamaguchi's name had grown a pronounced weight, a film here which could be in danger of being ignored, but is profound for me as it is exceptional as the deliberately little film.

 

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1) Taken from Film Dates.co.uk's entry for the film for the release date's accuracy for the British cinema release.