Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

Three separate stories, three separate coincidences. In one, a woman realises that the new lover her friend is describing is her own ex. In the second, a student uses a woman to set a trap for the professor who failed him, and the trap goes somewhere unexpected. In the third, two women meet years later on an escalator and both discover they are mistaken. The stories do not connect; what they share is where chance takes a person. Ryusuke Hamaguchi wrote and directed. The structure came out of a conversation. Hamaguchi talked with Éric Rohmer's editor about Rohmer's Rendezvous in Paris, and the idea of a film in three parts came from there. It screened at the Berlin International Film Festival on 1 March 2021 and won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize. The whole weight of the film is in the dialogue. Hamaguchi holds scenes long, barely moves the camera, and gets tension purely from a conversation changing direction. Who it is for: viewers who like long dialogue scenes and the Rohmer tradition. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events. Almost nothing happens in any of the three parts and the film is not troubled by that.