X-RAYS OF THE SOUL: THE INTIMATE HUMAN DRAMAS OF RYUSUKE HAMAGUCHI

Born in 1978 in Kanagawa, Ryusuke Hamaguchi is one of the most distinctive cinematic voices to emerge from Japan in the new millennium. His cerebral, dialogue-driven and often purposively digressive films probe the mysteries of others’ inner lives, the performativity of identity and the veracity of memory, in works that bend and stretch cinema’s narrative possibilities. After completing a degree in aesthetics at the University of Tokyo in 2003, followed by a brief stint in commercial production, Hamaguchi returned to postgraduate film studies in 2008, during which he was mentored by J-horror maestro Kiyoshi Kurosawa. His thesis film, the love-triangle drama Passion (2008), earned early comparisons to Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and John Cassavetes. Now a critically lauded Oscar winner (for 2021’s Drive My Car) and a regular fixture in some of the most prestigious international film festivals, Hamaguchi has gone on to develop a meticulous and immersive cinematic style that combines minimalist realism with fraught and tumultuous emotions. As Manohla Dargis writes, “Hamaguchi’s touch – delicate, precise, restrained, gentle – overwhelms in increments”. This season brings together work predating the breakthrough of Drive My Car, from his early medium-length films Like Nothing Happened (2003) and I Love Thee For Good (2009) to lesser-seen features, such as The Depths (2010) and The Sound of Waves (2012, co-directed with Ko Sakai), and the internationally acclaimed Asako I & II (2018) and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021).

Wednesday 15 April

7:00pm WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY

Ryusuke Hamaguchi (2021) 121 mins – M

Released in the same year as the widely celebrated Drive My Car, and itself awarded the Silver Bear at the 71st Berlinale and acclaimed by Cahiers du cinéma, Hamaguchi’s intimate triptych presents three separate tales highlighting the nature of coincidence and fate amidst unrequited romance, seduction and misunderstanding. Although each section is imbued with a profound emotional complexity, Hamaguchi handles these female-centred stories with an imaginative and affective delicacy that is both evocative and deeply engaging.

9:20pm LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED

Ryusuke Hamaguchi (2003) 43 mins – Unclassified 15+

This program brings together two medium-length works from Hamaguchi’s early career. His second film was shot on 8mm while the director was still a student at the University of Tokyo. Structured around a series of unhurried conversations between five young friends – one of which is played by Hamaguchi himself – it already contains many of the themes and formal elements that would come to define his cinema. Followed by the TV project I Love Thee For Good Ryusuke Hamaguchi (2009) 58 mins – Unclassified 15+. A young couple’s impending marriage is threatened by the bride’s secret.

Wednesday 22 April

7:00pm ASAKO I & II

Ryusuke Hamaguchi (2018) 119 mins – M

Hamaguchi’s follow up to his widely acclaimed critical breakthrough, 2015’s marathon Happy Hour, is a faithful adaptation of a 2010 novel by Tomoka Shibasaki. Erika Karata plays Asako, a modern young woman who lives first in Osaka and then in Tokyo. When these two distinctly different chapters of Asako’s life suddenly blur together we glimpse the fickle and complex nature of romantic love. An examination of the female gaze and feminine desire that the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called an arresting and “amusing essay in amorous delusion”. With Masahiro Higashide.

9:15pm THE DEPTHS

Ryusuke Hamaguchi (2010) 121 mins – Unclassified 15+

A Korean fashion photographer (Kim Min-Joon) on assignment in Japan is drawn into a fraught triangle with his old friend (Soji Arai) and a young male escort (Hoshi Ishida), as desire and professional curiosity start to blur. An early feature, this Korean-Japanese co-production already shows Hamaguchi’s feel for relationships and desires built around glances, misread signals and half-spoken needs. The palpable queer tension threads through conversations that never fully align, with mistranslations and tonal slips underlining the film’s unease.

Wednesday 29 April

7:00pm TOUCHING THE SKIN OF EERINESS

Ryusuke Hamaguchi (2013) 54 mins – Unclassified 15+

This haunting tale of loneliness follows Chihiro (Shota Sometani) who, overwhelmed with grief after his father’s death, channels his emotions into dance. Driven by a lyrical, flowing sense of rhythm, movement and tactile intimacy, Hamaguchi’s evocative drama provides a fascinating angle on screen performance. With Hoshi Ishida and renowned choreographer Osamu Jareo. Preceded by Heaven is Still Far Away Ryusuke Hamaguchi (2016) 38 mins – Unclassified 15+. A melancholy yet hopeful ghost story partly made as a reward for contributors to the crowdfunding campaign that facilitated the production of 2015’s Happy Hour.

8:45pm THE SOUND OF WAVES

Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Ko Sakai (2012) 142 mins – Unclassified 15+

This first and most expansive entry in Hamaguchi and Sakai’s four-part series on the 2011 Tohoku earthquake presents firsthand accounts from survivors while exploring how tsunamis have helped form the region’s cultural fabric. Marking a turning point in Hamaguchi’s understanding of the camera’s relationship to its subjects, this documentary cycle was partly made in reaction to Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter – released in Japan in the days after the earthquake – with the director reflecting that “my goal was to place a camera in the middle of a tsunami in a way that was different”.