Movies at the Museum: Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) by Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s evocative triptych surveys a series of relationships muddied and tormented by miscommunication. Each encounter explores the lush, ambiguous terrain of things unsaid, misremembered, overwrought, and yearned for – sometimes grappled with in the subject’s imagination, or in the wake of the events happening offscreen.

Speaking of the film, New York Times chief film critic, Manohla Dargis wrote, “[m]ore challenging still, presumably, are his narrative choices and understated visuals, which don’t conform to the current template for American indie cinema with its dramatic problems, moral instruction and enough pictorial prettiness to make the emotional bloodletting go down smoothly.”

A celebration – an exaltation – of the quotidian, Hamaguchi’s triumph is in his enthusiasm for the gray areas of our messiest, and often most impactful, interpersonal encounters.