Best Ryusuke Hamaguchi Movies, Ranked

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Japanese director and screenwriter Ryusuke Hamaguchi has been making films for years, but it wasn’t until 2009 he decided to go back to school and learn how to make more artistic movies. He had been working in commercial film before deciding to change his trajectory. His early films are relatively unknown in the English-speaking world due to a lack of subtitles, but one of his most prominent movies from the beginning of his career was a documentary about the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan. His next film, Happy Hour, gained domestic traction, so when his 2018 film Asako I & II was released, it was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival, thus bringing his films international attention.

In 2021 alone, Hamaguchi had two new films released: Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. He was one of the screenwriters for Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Wife of a Spy, which took home the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Hamaguchi is unique in his scope: many of his films are women-centric. Drive My Car is his first major film to pivot from this, but the depth and nuance he adds to his characters, particularly the women, is gentle, and the visuals are mundane but elegant. These are Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s best films, ranked.

Related: Best South Korean Films of the 2000s, Ranked

4 Asako I & II


Woman in white t-shirt clutches yellow purse.
Nagoya Broadcasting Network

Asako I & II was Hamaguchi’s first film to debut at Cannes Film Festival, which is where it first began to charm audiences. Asako (Erika Karata) is the movie’s protagonist, and she’s a young university student living in Osaka searching for love. She engages in a relationship with a man named Baku (Masahiro Higashide), much to the chagrin of her friends. But one day Baku disappears permanently, leaving Asako behind. She moves to Tokyo and finds a new job, but while working at a café, she runs into a businessman who looks exactly like Baku. Naturally, Asako begins to fall for him, too, potentially finding the happiness she had sought out with Baku originally. Because he resembles her former lover, Asako falls in love with him, but he’s not as good at Baku, nor will he ever be. Perhaps that’s the core message of Asako I & II: there’s a rose-tinted lens of looking at the past and blocking a happy future because of someone being unable to move on.


3 Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy


Man talks to a younger girl at restaurant.
Neopa

Hamaguchi’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy was the first of his two 2021 releases. It debuted at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize. The movie is split into three segments and is vaguely reminiscent of Wong Kar-Wai’s earlier work. In the first segment, a model confronts her ex-boyfriend because her best friend wants to date him. The second segment begins with a student begging a teacher not to fail him, and then his desire to prove the professor wrong quickly turns ugly. The final story is about a high school reunion, and the main character, Natsuko, cannot remember any of her old classmates’ names. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy utilizes time, day and night, and themes of regret and loneliness to link these three stories in fascinating ways. The movie almost resembles a play with its three-act structure and acting methods, creating a unique viewing experience.

Related: Best Wong Kar-Wai Movies, Ranked

2 Happy Hour


Four women sit in one row on a bus.
Fictive

Happy Hour is a powerful and poignant drama that takes a long look at the power of female friendship. Clocking in at five hours of run time, the movie refuses to look away even in the face of hardship. Four women in Kobe, Japan, are friends. All are middle-class, married, and seemingly living the lives that most always dreamed of, but until one day, the cracks in their lives become exposed. They get together for happy hour, and as they begin to drink, the truth starts to come out. They learn that they’re all unhappy, but when one friend says she is getting a divorce, their friendship, too, begins to splinter. Hamaguchi didn’t use seasoned actors and instead chose to cast local actors, creating an atmosphere that utilizes realism and a mix of scripting and improv. Because of the movie’s length, viewers fully understand the good and bad of these characters and their situations.


1 Drive My Car


Man dressed in black leans against red car. Woman in driver's seat stares at him.
C&I Entertainment

Drive My Car has recently gotten Hamaguchi quite a bit of acclaim, from landing on the Oscar shortlist for Best International Feature to winning three awards at Cannes Film Festival. Hamaguchi adapted the script for this movie from a Haruki Murakami short story: “Drive My Car.” A theatre director (Hidetoshi Nishijima) has had a lot of trauma in his life. His wife (Reika Kirishima) and he have lost a four-year-old daughter, he’s witnessed her cheating on him, and, at the start of the movie, he comes home to find her dead on the floor. As he directs a new play, he must confront the circumstances leading up to his wife’s death and the new reality. Hamaguchi’s adaptation unfolds beautifully and takes creative liberty, especially as the original short story wasn’t that long, making a film that functions independently of the source material.


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