Wheel Of Fortune And Fantasy (M18)
121 minutes, now exhibiting at The Projector, 4 stars
Former lovers meet, pushed by the necessity for closure, therapeutic or the masochistic impulse to reopen wounds on this anthology of three brief movies by Japanese writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
As in his different 2021 movie, Drive My Automobile (additionally exhibiting at The Projector), a drama about misplaced love, Hamaguchi enjoys digging into the methods characters imprison themselves prior to now. Every encounter carries the potential for rekindled ardour or one thing extra harmful.
In As soon as Once more, the third brief story in Wheel, a coincidental reunion happens between former high-school classmates Natsuko (Fusako Urabe) and Aya (Aoba Kawai). However because the minutes tick by, regrets about issues left unsaid start to floor.
Like Drive My Automobile, Wheel is a pageant favorite. It gained the second highest award, the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, at this 12 months’s Berlin Worldwide Movie pageant.