After Drive My Car, crowned Oscar for best foreign film, Ryusuke Hamaguchi signs Tales of chance and other fantasies, a new nugget from the Japanese filmmaker to discover in theaters at the moment.
What is it about ?
An unexpected love triangle, an attempt at seduction that goes wrong and a meeting born of a misunderstanding. The trajectory of three women who will have to make a choice…
Tales of Chance and Other Fantasies (Japan) Directed and Written by Ryusuke Hamaguchiwith Kotone Furukawa, Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Fusako Urabe…
Released: April 6, 2022
Three Moral Tales
After Asako I & II, the Senses “saga” which unfolded in three films (and five segments) and the international success of Drive My Car (recently crowned Oscar for best foreign film), Ryusuke Hamaguchi comes back with Tales of chance and other fantasies (Guzen To Sozo). The filmmaker opts this time for three short films, following one another, each with different characters, but the same thread that binds them, around human relations and their morality. The film is very clearly in line with the cinema of Eric Rohmer, who had made his famous moral tales, a cycle of six films (like La Collectionneuse or Ma Nuit chez Maud).
A long sequence of erotic reading!
All three centered on female characters, the filmmaker who is also the scriptwriter of this film explains that it is precisely because he is interested in female characters that he manages to better X-ray Japanese society. According to him, they face much more difficulties than men. These women all have a quest that they try to carry out through these interactions with the other characters.
Misunderstandings, coincidences (this is also the meaning of the word “Gūzen”) and unexpected twists and turns are present in these three stories, with a lot of dialogue and chiseled writing. In the middle of all this, there is also a long sequence of erotic reading! We don’t tell you more.
Each of the segments takes place almost behind closed doors, even if the sets evolve over the course of the plot. Note that Tales of Chance and Other Fantasies was partially shot during the pandemic, in this case the last segment, with a reduced team.