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Among the best dialogues I've ever seen. Touching, emotional and very smart. It's the kind of film that you need to be 100% on it but it really worths. All these characters seem real and it's all about life choices.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a Japanese anthology film told as three dialogue-driven vignettes, about an unexpected dating mix-up, a malicious seduction, and a misunderstanding between strangers. The three shorts are not love stories, but rather stories about love in the face of coincidence.

Written and directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, the man behind the currently Oscar-nominated Drive My Car, the film evokes drama out of everyday mundanity.

If you had Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy on mute, you wouldn't see anything visually dramatic happening. There's no violence, chases, or explosions. Hamaguchi delivers three dramatically engaging conversations on film, much like a theatrical play. What the dialogue churns out of its characters is remarkable, ranging from the dark, the perverse, and the deceitful. It covers every color of the emotional spectrum, which I suspect was Hamaguchi's goal.

The film brilliantly steers clear of the trappings of anthology films. The three segments are in a perfect balance with each other and all serve the film's overall theme. There was no best segment out of the three, which is quite impressive.

After seeing Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, I thought about the everyday quality of life and how often that is forgotten as being dramatic. What the film explores is in a similar artistic area that the HBO show Mare of Easttown was exploring earlier this year.

Every dramatic moment in life tends to be a person in front of you about to reveal something for better or worse. And life just all seems like luck of the draw. This theme washed over me and I recollected similar moments in my own life afterward.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy captures its idea with impressive precision and also with a whimsical smile on its face. They don't really make films like this anymore and I'm glad someone brought it back. I look forward to seeing Drive My Car now.

Bookended by fantastic pieces,I would have rated a little lower, but the third act is marvelous. TBH the second story is good but way overshadowed by the other two. What a great treatment of what it means to "love."

With mise-en-scène that strongly resemblance of a stage play, there's an undeniable sort of distance between the viewers and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. At least for a while. But then Hamaguchi Ryûsuke was able to break the distance with his direction that felt both intimate and personal. In the end, the film has a lasting impact, even long after the end credit rolls.

'Wheel Of Fortune And Fantasy (2021)' is a triptych of entirely independent short stories loosely connected by their shared themes of fate and finding truth through purposely affected false pretences. Told primarily via dialogue with very little formalistic flair, the three stories vary in quality but are consistently grounded and character-driven. They're all very play-like in their execution and construction, with their various reveals and thematic elements being contained entirely within the conversations that act as their beating heart. This is, of course, is to be expected from writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, whose other recent effort, 'Drive My Car (2021)', was similar in terms of its - for lack of a better term - talky nature. The difference is that Hamaguchi plays around with structure in that piece and uses both its more prominent theming and its intimidating length to craft genuinely affecting character interactions as it approaches its finale. Here, he doesn't have time to really do what he does best - that being slow-burning, character-building drama - or, at the very least, he doesn't get to do it to the best of his abilities. The format simply doesn't allow for the same kind of development. That's not to imply that this effort is entirely unsuccessful. It's relatively engaging throughout and its stories progress fairly unexpectedly without feeling as though they're being subversive for the sake of it. The naturalistic acting enhances the cleanly grounded atmosphere, with the players disappearing into their roles to the point that it's sometimes easy to forget they're performing at all. There are some really long takes in here, too, which subtly showcase the technical prowess of all involved - both in front of and behind the camera. Ultimately, it is a little underwhelming, though. It doesn't grip you all that tightly and the pacing of all three shorts is fairly loose, leading to a bit of a meandering vibe that doesn't do the piece any favours. It's never boring, but it's never exciting or emotionally moving, either. It is interesting on occasion and it's undeniably a well-made affair, but it never rises beyond being just good (if that makes sense). Still, it's a solid effort overall.

This was my second Hamaguchi film of the year (the other being "Drive My Car"), and I'm starting to think I just don't vibe with his style.

To be fair to this movie, I'm not a fan of anthology films, so it was my choice to watch one. And I also watched it assuming that it would be similar in style to "Drive My Car" (it is) and knowing that I wasn't in the mood for a movie like that (it was due back to the library the next day so I felt forced to watch it).

I just get very restless watching Hamaguchi films. They're static and feel very long. Perhaps my favorite movie of 2021 was "Mass," a film that's mostly four characters talking in a single setting for two hours, so it's not like I'm resistant to the kinds of movies Hamaguchi makes. They just don't speak to me for some vague reason, even as I can see that they're objectively very good movies.

Grade: B+

Clearly, this movie polarises viewers. For me, way better than same director's Drive My Car. As good as Burning, American Honey, Stuff and Dough, or Our Time, a few of my benchmarks for 21st century cinema.

The original Japanese title, which translates as Coincidence and Imagination, is much more apt than the clunky English title.

To illustrate his theme, the director writes the most utterly brilliant dialogue, which is sort of like 3D scrabble on steroids.

For all of that, it still needs the wonderful third reel, where the coincidences coalesce into genuine insight and wisdom, of the sort that can reduce you to sudden tears in a darkened cinema.

Hamaguchi-san, you are an ornament, go to the top of the class. I reckon the old masterful deceiver, Bunuel, will be smiling down upon you.

The beauty of this movie lies in its simplicity and class. This is a classy movie with elegant characters, inspired by French cinema: Actors keep talking like there is no tomorrow. If you enjoy dialogue driven drama movies with some offbeat-comedy elements, you will enjoy it.

There are a few minor twists here and there but this is not a thrilling or exciting movie. Not groundbreaking or some kind of masterpiece either.

7.4/10. A very good movie for this genre.

There are three stories, basically three dialogues and in the first two stories the topics of discussion are also trivial if not boring: the first dialogue deals with emotional misunderstandings between young couples, the second is the story of a masturbation of no interest.

The third story, albeit unlikely, is the most interesting: a young woman lived an intense love affair with a high school friend and regrets not being able to express the importance and greatness of her love to her partner when she left her to get married. This story makes us understand how in today's world great importance is given to material well-being and economic conditions and, on the contrary, so little importance is given to our deepest feelings and passions. And so one of the questions the girl asks the other woman is: "Are you happy? Is this the life you dreamed of when you grew up?"

The director, Hamaguchi, defines himself as a "narrator" but the director of a film has many means and tools at his disposal to tell a story and to involve the viewer: the description of the unfolding of the narrative, the dialogues, the photography, the sounds, the music, the charisma of the actors, acting skills, etc., while this film is mainly based on dialogue and above all it lacks the emotional involvement of the viewer.

The director showed how to create an amazing story with just a fixed scene and two actors talking to each other with some very good dialogs.

Three stories:

The plot ingredients of the first - the problem of exes - material for a good farce or romantic comedy, but the segment here is complex, serious, hurt feelings instead of laughs. In other words, director Hamaguchi and actors treat the topic realistically. The second tale reminded me of the few pages of Murasaki I once managed to get through. And it is dark. The last story, my favorite, could have been inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Three Hours Between Planes" (1941), only here the tale is more complex, the characters' emotional intensity heightened.

For all three I had to remind myself that I was watching actors performing scripted roles. Just about every moment is believable. That credibility, combined with the demands of relating to the emotions presented on screen, make this a kind of "action" movie. In place of explosions and crashes, we get a strong, unadulterated presentation of the real lives of ordinary, flawed human beings, potentially the most frightening subject matter that can be put on a screen.

This is cinema's equivalent of the dry martini, strong and unadorned. Maybe not for everyone, but certainly deserves more of an audience.

To explain my vote a little: I knew nothing about Ryusuke Hamaguchi until I decided to see at least one 2021 Oscar-nominated movie and happened to choose "Drive My Car" at random. The experience sent me to this work, also released in 2021. Since seeing "Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy" I have seen "Asako I & II" (2018) and most recently, "Happy Hour" (2015). All told I think I have seen over twelve hours of movies from this director.

Time well spent.

(Apologies in advance for spending most of this review comparing the film to Drive My Car... I couldn't help it 😔)

The less well-known (but still quite good) 2021 film by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. I understand why Drive My Car has made more of an impact, and overall I enjoyed it more. But this is a different sort of movie and it's interesting to compare and contrast the two.

Apparently Drive My Car blended several short stories, but did it in a way where (to me at least) it felt like one coherent three-hour film. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy tells three short stories as three short films, each approximately 40 minutes long. Because of this, I'd say it lacked the almost hypnotic effect that Drive My Car had, where it sucks you in and becomes absorbing the longer it goes on.

One other interesting difference: it doesn't make the movie better or worse, but I found it interesting how in Drive My Car, the lead characters keep their emotions held in, whereas in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, characters are surprisingly open. Even when they hide the truth, it doesn't take long for them to reveal it (maybe besides the third story, which emotionally feels the most similar to Drive My Car).

This film isn't as beautiful as Drive My Car. Some of it looks a little rough and flat to be honest, but maybe the minimalist style was intentional, and to be fair, there are a few visually arresting shots throughout that really stand out.

The stories themselves are interesting, and the dialogue mostly engaging. Acting is good across the board too, and overall, while it's not always consistently absorbing, I enjoyed it for the most part, and much of it is undeniably well-made.

2021 was a good year for Hamaguchi, and I'm interested to see what he directs next.

I watched this on a friend's Mubi account - the day before it was leaving the streaming service. So glad I caught it. Unlike most Mubi fare, this is a film with so much to say and so much to narratively engage the viewer. It's little short of miraculous that it does it with such limited and economic means, the stories unfolding in simple shots and long dialogues that perfectly pay out the key information to lead us to delicious ironies, fascinating interactions and the deepest of feeling. Not only that, but it does it three times in three separate stories, proving beyond doubt that the neglected art of the short film, done right, can be as or more powerful than the feature.

I don't like "day and night" very much, but I unexpectedly like it. Watching the film will really change with the passage of time, the change of place and the growth of mentality. Lightness and relaxation are the most intuitive feelings brought to the audience. Although the choice of each character may change the fate, after the reversal of lifting heavy as light, there is only relief and aftertaste left. I like the third story best. It is the most coincidental and untrue, but it indicates rebirth and hope, which may also be the biggest charm of Hamaguchi film.

Hamaguchi Ryusuke also directed one of the best films of 2021 with "Drive My Car". In this cinematic triptych, he explores the nature of fidelity, memory and complex relationships. The first of the three pieces is riveting conversation and I loved it. The other two are nice, but perhaps a little too distant to be fully grasped. As with all of his films, the performances are key, as his stoic camera observes quietly.

I read the good reviews but it was really quite boring. And so I was dissapointed. I was hoping to see romance develop in the story. But it was quite bland unfortunately.

Having just watched director Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, it feels like I watched someone masterfully demonstrate the beauty in the weaknesses of being human. An anthology consisting of three vignettes, each story as carried through a form of one unifying conversation, is a testament to storytelling at its most simplest and its most effective.

It's a movie that is beautiful to look at, beautiful to understand and beautiful to recollect. And I'm certain this movie will stick with me for a long, long time. I cannot recommend this movie enough to anybody as I truly believe it can add value to how one already sees the world.

"Wheel of fantasy also presents itself in the other two stories, in "Door Wide Open", sexual tension/seduction is fantasized nearly to a boiling point through Nao's intonation-like reading out loud an erotic passage of Segawa's awarding-winning new novel, and the professor's incorruptible respectability, who always leaves the door of his office wide open, prompts Nao to open up about her weakness as a young married woman who finds it hard to resist temptation. Something painfully honest and instructive crystallizes out of this unusual conversation, only to be crushed by a fateful typo, and eventually a chance meeting prompts Nao to exact her revenge to the remorseless abetter Sasaki (Kai). Mori transcendently calibrates Nao's heterogeneous phenotype evinced from interiority meanwhile Shibukawa inhabits Segawa's reserved propriety so firmly that the after-effect of their two-handler resonates with a strange mix of thrill and Weltschmerz."

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"Wheel of fortune and fantasy" was relaesed in Dutch arthouses only after the big success of "Drive my car" (2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi).

The same happened with for example "Red Sorghum" (1988, Zhang Yimou) after the successes of his later films "Ju Dou" (1990) and "Raise the red lantern" (1991). In cases like this the question is, is the film really good or is it an attempt to piggyback on a later success? In the case of Hamaguchi this question is all the more understandable because of the short period of time between the two films. Did he really make two masterpieces in one year?

When writing this review, I have seen "Wheels of fortune and fantasy" but not "Drive my car". My conclusion can therefore be only provisional. This conclusion is that "Wheels of fortune and fantasy" is a good film, but in my opinion not of the quality of an Oscar winner ("Drive my car" won the Oscar for best foreign language movie).

"Wheel of fortune and fantasy" is a film consisting of three episodes. All episodes are about love and or sex. The lead characters in all episodes are women. In one episode the male character remarks that in the relationship he is nothing more than a dildo. Luckily this is exaggerated, but the center of gravity of the film lies undeniably with the female characters.

The title of the film is well chosen. No "normal" relationships in this film, but unexpected twists and turns in all episodes ("wheel of fortune"). In NOT chronological order the twists and turns center on attempted blackmail, love triangle and mistaken identity.

More important is that the film is not about action but about fantasy. And thus also about dialogue and monologue. While the film is about love and sex, nude scenes are almost completely absent. This is most prominently illustrated in the second episode. In my opinion the best scene was however the beginning of the first episode, in which two female friends discuss the new boyfriend of one of them during a taxi ride. Increasingly excited, they discuss the possibility of an erotic ending of the next encounter.