Ryusuke Hamaguchi¡¯s ¡°Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,¡± which won the grand jury prize at this year¡¯s Berlin International Film Festival, is a three-part anthology in which its stories are linked by themes implied in the segment titles: Each of the three female protagonists¡¯ lives are changed by chance and all three stories ask ¡°what if¡± questions that stimulate the imagination, with one even venturing into sci-fi.
The segments are also imbued with an eroticism at once playful and serious, tied to the women¡¯s emotional cores. Throughout the film, German composer Robert Schumann¡¯s ¡°Traumerei¡± (¡°Dreaming¡°), with its sweet simplicity and merry-go-round-like repetitions, evokes the ¡°wheel¡± of the English title.
The stories, written by Hamaguchi, thus have a formal unity, while reflecting the unruly nature of life, with its coincidences and sudden changes of heart and luck that seem to defy reason. They solidify his reputation as a director of rare talent and ambition, though both qualities were already apparent in his 2015 breakthrough ¡°Happy Hour,¡± a five-hour drama that also experimented with form and narrative.
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