Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

Kiyohiko Shibukawa and Katsuki Mori in Door Wide Open

More is sometimes less. Not so with Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, three separate love stories connected by the fact that the the people in them are a bit fucked up and which together deliver more synergistic bang for your buck than the average single-plot feature. Offbeat associations are something of a theme with the films of writer/director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, whose feature debut was all about an astronaut’s relationship with his dead wife. Yes, reader, it was a remake of Tarkovsky’s Solaris, no less – made while Hamaguchi was at college. He went on to explore human relations in films like Passion, Intimacies and Touching the Skin of Eeriness and his current film, … Read more