The films of Ryusuke Hamaguchi unspool with elegant everyday ease and yet anything can happen.
Lives take sudden detours. Seemingly minor characters become primary ones. People are brought together by mysterious connections. There are even, as in the case of his Asako I & II, doppelgangers. Soberly naturalistic as Hamaguchi’s movies are, they’re among the most beguilingly unpredictable.
That was true of his Oscar-nominated Drive My Car, which over the course of three hours took winding narrative turns in route to its moving terminus. But it’s doubly so in Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist, a shorter and more enigmatic drama but a no less enchanting one.