It's a film about love, in the broadest sense.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 19, 2024

Through three distinct but thematically connected stories in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi paints a vivid portrait of people facing choices and fates.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 18, 2024

Hamaguchi’s writing and direction are deeply humanistic and give us the sense that in life, although unpredictable, there are moments that can change us that are both small and monumental.

| May 4, 2024

The small emotional truths dotted throughout this remarkably consistent collection of stories add up to a supremely satisfying experience, and stand as the perfect introduction to a great film-maker.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 8, 2023

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy contains the same minimalist pedigree but uses cruel twists of fate to extract existential truths from its imperfect characters.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 21, 2023

The Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a magnificent narrative exercise, a triptych of interdependent stories that share the same tripartite structure, and are united by chance and a deft filmmaker who defies the limits of cinema. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 9/10 | May 23, 2023

The strength of The Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy lies in the point of connection and at the same time disconnection between that individualist philosophical project and that other in which the individual is more erased.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Feb 27, 2023

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy splits itself into three short stories, each one a tight exploration of a unique relationship.

| Nov 2, 2022

Whimsical and poignant... Hamaguchi is acutely interested in honing in on tiny details which may have unknowable impact.

| Original Score: A- | Sep 1, 2022

In a beguiling piece about playing parts, and that makes the process of adopting a role its very reason for flickering, peering at its actors feels like peering at reality at its most soulful, insightful and also playful.

| Jun 24, 2022

You will not see many better written, better performed or more affecting films this year. Or any year. Hugely recommended.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 9, 2022

And maybe, underneath the whispers, we glean the point of the entire movie: That love, whether brief or eternal, is impossible. But that our quest to find it and fantasize about it are infinite. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 8, 2022

A spare and elegant anthology of random stories about young Japanese, women in the main, searching for meaning in their relationships, that combines as a meditation on chance and coincidence in modern life

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 7, 2022

With Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Hamaguchi proves, once more, that he is an eloquent master of conversation naturalism and a virtuoso...

| Jun 2, 2022

Resilient, elegant, and delicate in the staging and in the direction of performers, Hamaguchi works within the risky confines of political (in)correctness. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 1, 2022

This fortuitous and fanciful wheel is inevitably stamped by Japanese idiosyncrasy, but its spirit is universal. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 1, 2022

If you’re a relative newcomer to Hamaguchi’s work, this triptych of gently humane, wistful short stories is an ideal, approachable introduction.

| Jun 1, 2022

Three stories… with different characters and situations united by the common thread chance plays in everyday life. [Full review in Spanish]

| May 19, 2022

All the interest lies in the conversations between characters as they spin stories about themselves. They test and probe each other. They tell lies, or rather fashion their own versions of the truth

| May 8, 2022

As with Nitram and Father Stu, Hamaguchi’s cast joins this year’s extraordinary exhibition of vivid, revealing characterizations. This is real culture, not fake culture. Hamaguchi discovers the human touch.

| Apr 29, 2022