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).