Audiences, ignoring the critics, are captivated by Hamaguchi’s vivid, adult characters, and for good reason.
The modestly popular Japanese film Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy proves that our cultural gatekeepers are unreliable. It was the first of two Ryusuke Hamaguchi movies to be exhibited at film festivals last year — the other being the three-hour Best International Oscar-winner Drive My Car. But Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is the one that’s still playing in theaters to live audiences and for the good reason that it’s the best. Moviegoers genuinely respond to it despite the other film’s hard sell by dishonest journalists (yes, even reviewers create Fake News) and an out-of-touch motion picture Academy.
While Drive My Car made Hamaguchi seem merely the latest trendy favorite of critics who disdain Western film culture (thus they overrated the time-killing monotony of his epic-length narrative strategy), Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a portmanteau film offering three short love stories in which interest grows over the course of merely two hours.
Hamaguchi shows a sense of entertainment that is rather surprising after his previous ersatz-Chekhov film. In the style of Eric Rohmer’s Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle and Rendezvous in Paris, Hamaguchi structures these discrete tales — “Magic (or Something Less Assuring),” “Door Wide Open,” and “Once Again” — so that each is successively captivating. The most obviously marketable anecdote comes in the middle, a verbally explicit, mutual sexual seduction and dramatic climax, after which the concluding sketch serves as a dénouement.
Each story is a variation of another: “Magic” tests the idea of sexual chemistry, friendship, and fidelity between braggart Meiko (Kotone Furukawa), her friend Tsugumi (Hyunri), and her boyfriend Kazuaki (Ayumu Nakajima). “Door Wide Open” uses sex as the basis of entrapment when vengeful student Nao (Katsuki Mori) convinces his girlfriend Segawa (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) to seduce professor Sasaki (Shouma Kai). Then “Once Again” explores the emotions behind sexual attraction when Moka (Fusako Urabe) mistakes Nana (Aoba Kawai) for an old lover.
These are not just more concise narratives than in Drive My Car. The ideas in Hamaguchi’s stories develop emotions — the specter of loneliness — rather than meander toward quizzical, highbrow pathos. Yes, sex has always been the draw that foreign-language films have for American audiences, but Hamaguchi captures the emotional distance promoted in modern sexual culture (which Drive My Car only banally suggested).
The first story’s subtitle, “Something Less Assuring,” speaks to the insecurity that predominates in digital culture and that creates so much spiritual distance. “Once Again” announces a postapocalyptic setting, but it’s a narrative prank; everything looks contemporary just as the two women’s emotional caution feels timeless. It’s no wonder that Drive My Car could not rely on personal recommendation; word of mouth must explain why Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy has won viewers at Film Forum and generated a striking Blu-Ray release from Film Movement.
Drive My Car’s unfathomable acclaim created a useless contrast to the comic-book movie junk that is now turned into predictable box-office blockbusters — fake culture that says nothing about our inner lives. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy offers a different alternative, confirming that relatable, adult experience also has appeal, especially when it’s seen in absolutely recognizable behavior. The triangle in “Door Wide Open” is worthy of comparison to the charisma and intensity that audiences found in Godard’s and Rohmer’s actors. And as with Nitram and Father Stu, Hamaguchi’s cast joins this year’s extraordinary exhibition of vivid, revealing characterizations. This is real culture, not fake culture. Hamaguchi discovers the human touch.
