Gûzen to sôzô / Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) – 3/5

Very watchable collection of three dialogue-drivern short films

„Gûzen to sôzô“ or „Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy“ (almost like the game show) is a Japanese movie from 2021 and the writer and director is Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and if you combine this name with the year 2021, then most people, most film buffs, will immediately think of „Drive my Car“ because that film did not only win the Oscar in the foreign language category, dominated the awards season there, but also got Hamaguchi two Oscar nominations, one for screenplay and the other, probably more surprising one came for his direction. It is surely impressive to see that he did not only direct that film then, but also the one we have here. In the same year. I think in most other countries the film I am writing about here had a much earlier release than in my country Germany, in many countries it came out before Drive My Car even I suppose, but here it took really long until autumn 2022 until the film finally hit theaters. I am glad it did. I enjoyed the watch today and did not regret going at all. Glad I went and gave it a chance. It is a relatively long film as it crosses the two-hour mark, even if not by a lot. Actually, I could almost say it is three movies in one because it is indeed a collection of three shorter films and these segments have nothing in common with each other in terms of the characters depicted in there. There are some parallels in story-telling you could say. For example, coincidence plays a huge role in all of these, no matter if we are looking at the idea that a female character was unknowingly about to date her best friend’s (ex-)boyfriend. Or if we are looking at the idea that one woman accidentally sends a slightly naughty email to the wrong recipient. Or if we take into consideration how one woman on the escalator decides to stop another because she mistook her for somebody else from her past. There are even more examples. Just look at the mailman coming at exactly the right time to stop one character when this character is about to storm out of the building and it could have meant that the two women never would have seen each other again if the mailman had not shown up there this very moment. You can find more crucial coincidences in the first two segments as well I am sure.

When I think about coincidence in movies, the Coen Brothers are the ones who always come to my mind first as they have elaborated on this to perfection and not only in terms of a lunatic killer and his coins, but Hamaguchi also did a really nice job here overall. I cannot say much about the cast. I like Asian films, but I am not really deep enough into them to immediately recognize every actor and remember their bodies of work when I see them. Maybe one day it will happen, not so sure though. I see that most cast members from this film here are quite experienced and have appeared in many other projects despite being relatively young still. Not all of them of course. If you like the Jean Reno movie Wasabi, you will also find a familiar face here in the second segment it was I think. What the first two segments have in common is romance from the slightly more naughty side too. With the last segment, you cannot really say that, but who knows in which direction the relationship between these two women is eventually going to take. It seems to me as if there could be more than friendship in store for them, but that is of course just speculation. One aspect you will find in every segment of the three is that there is some kind of affection or at least attraction love triangle included there. With the first, it is very obvious. With the second, you can say that the only female character was eventually also attracted to the writer and with the final segment, there are only two women (or „only“) included, but if we take the person into account that one character initially mistook the other for, then this comes into play again. Of course, you could then say it is even four people with the final revelation (piano girl), but for me three seems more accurate because one character is the reason for all this scenario unfolding, even if we never meet this first true love for the woman with the short hair. Was she Eurasian mix by the way? I am not sure, but she looked a bit like it.

Please ignore the fact that my review is not chronological and that I am jumping back and forth between the segments, but I still hope you don’t have a too difficult time following my train of thought. With the second segment, I also found the writer somewhat fascinating, how calm and focused he is there in the face of the woman’s behavior. Just look at the moment he opens the door again right after she closed it a few moments earlier. Really, his behavior there was to a degree where I was wondering if he was maybe either homosexual or asexual. One of the two. Or another explanation could of course be that he was not one bit attracted to the female lead from this segment. As a heterosexual male, I cannot really comment on the looks of the guys, but I can imagine that girls also liked Shibukawa and the others from a merely physical perspective. With the exception of the last segment, I think the women in this movie were all really beautiful. That is of course personal taste. Maybe some others will not see too much in Furukawa and Hyunri and Mori, but see more in Urabe and Kawai. Maybe also your age plays a role here. In any case, it is interesting to see Hyunri with her name here as I thought Asian actors and actresses with only one word for their name can be found almost exclusively in India, but seems it is also an option in Japan, even if it is clearly more of a rarity there. What else can I say? Oh yeah, the slim cast and not too many different locations make this film or each of the segments also very suitable for stage plays. I hope it gets turned here and there into something like this. These dialogue-driven confrontations and sometimes also escalations would surely be a joy to watch with actors present in the same room. Not sure if it could be happening here in Germany, but maybe in some theater in Japan or elsewhere in Asia. I also like the main theme from this film. The piano music I mean, the one we hear on a few occasions, especially between the individual segments. I had to look it up and I see it is from the short-lived Robert Schumann from the 19th century and the name is „Kinderszenen“ or „Scenes from the Childhood“. Quite interesting for me as a German that said piece was included here. But I liked it. It fit nicely in terms of tone and atmosphere.

Let’s look the first segment now: When we have the two girls in the taxi talk about a new love interest for one of them, it was fascinating to watch them both, but especially Furukawa’s character because she realized quickly her friend was talking about her (former) boyfriend. I was still wondering why Hyunri’s character did not know said boyfriend through her female friend, but I guess maybe it is not too common to introduce each other’s partners to your closest friends in Asia? I cannot comment on that as I simply do not know enough about the society and specific customs there, but they seemed close and that is why I was surprised. A specific moment I really liked was when one girl was out of the car and the other told the taxi driver to drive back exactly the way and the exact route he drove to get to his destination. My idea was that the words from her friend put her in such ecstasy that she maybe wanted to live through it again this way, but the truth could not be any further away from this. She knew exactly what was going on and about whom Hyunri’s character was talking there. So she confronted the man about it and there is escalation like when he says she should shut up and leave or he might end up killing her, but also then again some kind of harmony when he makes a joke about something offensive she said about his genitalia and he quickly got over it because before that, namely when she just made the joke, he was really angry and destroyed something even. At the end of the segment, at the restaurant, we first see a fictitious segment of how the situation could have unfolded as well between the three, but then Furukawa’s character apparently realizes that she would only hurt and harm everybody if she decided to tell her friend the full truth, so she just left and even made a compliment about how well the other two fit together. She said on a few occasions already that, regardless of if she loves him or not, he seems to be a much better match for her friend than for herself. So there is a bit of a happy ending and it was a nicely powerful statement on accepting it when you have lost and who knows, maybe the two will not actually work out and in this case she also did not ruin all her chances the way she maybe would have if she had let it all out in the presence of the other two.

That is it then. Difficult to decide for me which of the three segments was my favorite, but it was probably between the first and second. The first was really good in total and the second made up for minor weaknesses with the final revelation how the female protagonist and the writer lost everything. I am a bit surprised though that she did not even think about her own marriage and what might happen if she really manages to destroy the writer’s career. It all had to come out then just like it did and she had a lot to lose as well. In terms of family, reputation etc. The only winner in the end was really her previous affair then who was surely the least likable from the trio. For me at least. So compared to the happy ending from the first segment, here we have the exact opposite. I was still wondering if what the writer said on tape would really ruin his career the way we are led to believe it did. I guess in Japan it could have, yes. Also if we go a few years back into the past, the masturbation comment could have been enough. Here in Germany maybe not. I give this three-film collection a thumbs-up overall. See it.