Three film scores dedicated to the consequences of love and destiny. The Japanese Hamaguchi investigates feelings ranging from Chekhov to Murakami
Originally there are three stories by the director himself, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, but the ghost that moves between those characters is that of Chekhov (who will become central in the director’s next film, «Drive My Car», Applauded at Cannes), that melancholy and detached gaze capable of indelibly sculpting the heartbeats and hesitations of so many« ordinary people ». Just as the protagonists of “The game of fate and fantasy”, deservedly distributed by Tucker Film after applause in Berlin (Silver Bear) and in the Far East.
Three stories, three episodes – “Magic (or something less reassuring)”, «The door wide open» and «Once again» – accompanied by the almost hesitant notes of Dreami by Schumann, to tell what? Almost nothing, we would say if we were adepts of any form of storytelling, but it is precisely this kind of rarefaction of feelings, this (apparent) suspension of judgment, this delicacy (of touch and expression) the greatest gift of a film capable of bewitching and delving into our emotions.
The first episode tells of two friends who come back from work – a photographic set – they exchange sentimental confidences: one tells of the encounter with a boy and the feeling that immediately snapped between them; the other questioned her with interest, only to discover, when they broke up, that the boy her friend met was her ex. In whose office he shows up by surprise. In the second episode, a student (who we will discover is already married) agrees to set a trap, on behalf of a university colleague and her lover, to the French teacher who rejected the boy: she must try to seduce him and record everything for later feed it to the newspapers. But the attempt at seduction will become something unexpected.
In the third episode, two young women, who cross each other on a ladder mobile, they think they recognize an old schoolmate in each other, only to confess, during the tea they have together, not only their mistake, but also the reason why they had wanted to magnify that misunderstanding. Three stories that revolve around the randomness and misunderstandings that it can cause but which become pretexts for delving into the mysteries of the human soul and its behavior. This can be understood perfectly well in the way – always surprising – with which Hamaguchi closes his three stories: playing with the combinatorial ambiguity of a sliding door existential, revealing how chance can remedy “errors” but also modify human lives and finally offering “lies” the way to become more true than truth. But all with a delicacy and a simplicity that surprises.
The direction seems to hide behind the words, almost to cancel itself out to leave the dialogue supremacy and the viewer is easily captured by the phrases that lead him into surprising situations. But to guide the eye is always the direction of Hamaguchi, essential, almost “poor” (often played on the field / reverse) but with a surgical effectiveness. When the professor has to dismantle the mise-en-scène of his “temptress”, his gaze seems to turn directly to the viewer (while avoiding the unpleasant effect of the “look into the car” which would end up breaking the enchantment of fiction), as if to emphasize the importance of what he is saying.
When the two women of the third episode seem to want to justify by dint of more or less invented memories the reasons for their meeting, the scene is resumed from the outside of the window that illuminates the room, but when those memories become authentic confessions and give way to their private truths, the machine returns to frame them from the inside, erasing the “screen” that divided the viewer from them, precisely to underline the authenticity of their words. Just like the tales of Chekhov (or Murakami, who will intertwine with «Zio Vanja» in «Drive My Car») Where the everyday situations or the simplicity of the story hide a wealth of suggestions and absolutely surprising nuances.
August 21, 2021 (change August 21, 2021 | 21:35)
© Time.News