Hong Sang-soo’s A Traveler’s Needs

Hong Sang-soo’s films with French actress Isabelle Huppert have all arisen out of chance meetings and commenced without finished scripts. For their latest film, it really shows. Hong’s films are always lightweight, but this one could blow away with a gentle breeze. The film follows a French tutor, who like the director, somehow gets away with never preparing for her students in Hong’s A Traveler’s Needs, which just opened in additional cities.

Iris supposedly teaches French by prodding her students to rcall their deepest emotional memories and then translating them into French and recording them on audio cassettes for them to listen to. This way, their lessons will resonate for them, unlike that rote Dick-and-Jane stuff.

Okay, maybe. Not all of her clients are convinced, but her loyal student Isong buys in. She obediently discusses the thoughts that went through her head while playing piano (during which time, Iris boorishly steps outside for a smoke). Then, she refers her tutor to a married couple she knows.

Wonju clearly suspects Iris is a lazy scammer, but her husband Haesoon is impressed by her ability drink makgeolli without any signs of inebriation. Eventually, Wonju plays guitar, prompting a conversation almost identical to the one Iris had with Isong, which constitutes the film’s clearest manifestation of Hong’s regular doubling or repeating motif.

Then Iris returns home to spend time with her much younger roommate-slash-ambiguous boyfriend, Inguk, until his mother (who is about her age) pops in unexpectedly. Then, she is off like a rocket, leaving him to mother’s third-degree.

Honestly, Traveler’s Needs must be Hong’s dullest film to-date, which is saying something. Even by his generous standards, it is aimless in direction and decidedly sleight. Even Huppert, his buddy at Cannes, appears to struggle with her halting, minimalist dialogue. Hong’s regular player, Kwon Hae-hyo, just falls back on tried-and-true Hong-isms, mostly by drinking like a fish. There is simply no meat on his bony screenplay for them to sink their teeth into. Only Cho Yunhee successfully gets into any sort of rhythm as Inguk’s mom, who really is quite a formidable interrogator.

Hong Sang-soo’s In Our Day

Even though Hong Sang-soo is a film director, he seems to believe actors are the dullest people in the world. Once again, he apparently sets out to prove it with his latest film. Supposedly, this is a film about coincidence, but the not so ironic happenstances are weak and tangential in Hong’s In Our Day, which is now playing in New York.

Sang-won is an actress, who is crashing with her friend Jung-soo and Jung-soo’s cat Us, now that she has returned to Korea after a long absence. Hong Uiju is a poet who lives alone, since the death of his cat. That is really a shame for the poet and the audience, because Us is probably the most interesting character in the film.

Today, both will be visited by aspiring thesps, who supposedly want to ask them big meaningful questions. However, when Ji-soo and Jae-won try to get out the words, they sound pretentious and inarticulate. Sang-won and Uiju also eat ramen with red chili paste. Yes, that is a big deal in this film. Perhaps you can understand why Us eventually runs away from home.

Maybe Hong was trying to recapture the inspiration of his best films, Hill of Freedom, Yourself and Yours, and Right Now, Wrong Then, which slyly riffed on doubling motifs, while employing hip bifurcated structures. If so, he was really forcing it. Unfortunately, his shallow and annoying characters need even more work than the skeletal narrative.

Frankly, In Our Day feels more like an improv workshop than a proper film. Perhaps the only memorable dialogue comes when Sang-won explains to her cousin Ji-soo how she never felt she ever gave an honest performance, because she knew her directors always wanted a predictably safe canned response. Kim Min-hee (often referred to as Hong’s “muse”) delivers this pseudo-monologue with such earnestness, perhaps it should tell the director something.

Curator’s Choice ’22: Introduction

Hong Sang-soo’s films do not usually bring to mind the career of American actor Neal McDonough (seen in films like 1922 and the series Yellowstone), but one of his latest characters also happens to be an actor who refused to perform in love scenes. While McDonough admirably takes his commitment to his wife seriously, Young-ho maybe got ahead of himself with his girlfriend Ju-won. Of course, communication is awkwardly imperfect for everyone in Hong’s Introduction, which screens during MoMI’s Curator’s Choice series.

At a mere sixty-six minutes, Introduction has the virtue of being Hong’s shortest film released this year—out of a whopping total of three. It also happens to be improvement over The Novelist’s Film. It still lacks the playfulness of his best films, but the cagey temporal jumps harken back to the old Hong. He also rather deviously has his characters withhold information until late in their conversations, to keep viewers somewhat in the dark.

In the first part, we see Young-ho cooling his heels in his semi-estranged doctor-father’s waiting room, hoping to ask for money to allow him to study abroad. Part 2 is a flashback, wherein he visits his (future ex-) girlfriend in Berlin, where she is studying fashion. Hong flashforwards again in Part 3, revealing his relationship did not last, despite his self-defeating on-screen abstinence.

Hong Sang-soo’s The Novelist’s Film

Novelists have a spotty track record directing films based on their own work. Michael Crichton and Clive Barker did pretty well for themselves, but Stephen King and Norman Mailer disappointed their admirers (but delighted fans of high camp). It is hard to say how Kim Jun-hee might fare, because her filmmaking goals and intentions are rather vague. That makes her a fitting protagonist for Hong Sang-soo’s latest lowkey binge-drinking gab-film, The Novelist’s Film, which opens today in New York.

Kim ventured out of Seoul to visit her old friend Se-won, who now owns the local independent bookstore. Their reunion catches Se-won by surprise. In fact, it is somewhat awkward, but rather mildly so, by Hong’s standard. Afterward, she visits the local scenic tower, where she coincidentally runs into Hyo-jin, a director who once attempted to adapt one of her novels, but the project fell-through. Again, it is awkward, but not outrageously so.

Strolling outside in the gardens, they just so happen to run into Kil-soo, a thesp Hyo-jin knows, who has put her career on hold, retreating to the peaceful calm of the provinces. Kim did not know her before, but they get on like a house on fire—so much so, Kil-soo agrees to appear in the yet to be conceived film the novelist suddenly decides to make.

In Hong’s previous films, coincidences were clever inventions that created their own meaning. Unfortunately, the coincidences in Novelist’s Film simply come across as humdrum occurrences necessitated by the relatively small cast of characters. The wit is largely gone, but the neuroses remain.

Hong Sang-soo’s The Woman Who Ran

Miles Davis used to perform with his back turned to the audience. The men in Hong Sang-soo’s latest film are not that cool. Instead, they are a rather neurotic lot, so Hong focuses on the women they are trying to talk to instead. Those would be Gam-hee's old friends, who she sets out to visit in Hong’s The Woman Who Ran, which is currently playing in New York.

When Hong’s film had its festival debut last February, Gam-hee might have sounded a bit unusual for spending every single day of the past five years with her husband. One pandemic from Xi Jinping later, a lot of people are over a fifth of the way to that milestone themselves. Regardless, when her loving spouse was suddenly summoned for a business trip, she decided to take advantage of the opportunity to visit two old friends. She will also have a supposedly chance encounter with a third former classmate. With the three-part structure, Hong renews his affinity for parallel theme-and-variations.

Young-soon is divorced and living happily with a younger roommate, but both women just show disinterested contempt for the neighbor who comes to complain about the stray cats they feed (his wife has a cat phobia). After years of caring for her mother, Su-young now lives carefree in a building catering to artists. She is cautiously exploring a relationship with an architect, but embarrassingly, it is the young poet she mistakenly hooked-up with who comes calling. Gambee was not expecting to see Woo-jin, but she works in the arts center, where the restless woman popped in to see a movie. It turns out they have something in common: Jung, whose face we briefly see, so that we know he is played by Hong’s regular alter-ego, Kwon Hae-hyo.

There is a bit of the old playfulness in Woman Who Ran that has been largely missing from Hong’s post-scandal films, especially in the way he so deliberately keeps his male characters faceless. It is still a “small film,” but most of his films are “small.” In this case the big revelation and payoff are mostly implied, but its subtlety is definitely its strength. Arguably, this might be his best film with Kim Min-hee since Right Now, Wrong Then, which was before their tabloid notoriety.

Hong Sang-soo’s Grass

It is small café, but it is good for writing. You can always find a table and the owner doesn’t mind if you bring in your own soju to get hammered with. However, you still have to step outside to smoke, because that is the law, even in South Korea. These are all important considerations for Hong Sang-soo characters. We will listen in along with an eave-dropping woman as they wrestle with their neuroses and disappointments in Hong’s Grass, which opens this Friday in New York.

Areum types away as various pairings of characters confront each other. In previous Hong films, he probably would have openly invited viewers to question whether these characters are figments of her literary imagination or if she is merely recording what she overhears. However, this is the post-scandal Hong, who is now apparently less considered with narrative gamesmanship, so he only occasionally hints at such postmodern mischief-making this time around. Instead, he is more concerned with the crystallized essences of their respective angsts and anxieties.

One couple laments the presumptive suicide of a mutual friend, for whom they both feel some measure of guilt and responsibility. A self-destructive actor rather directly propositions a former lover to become his sole “sugar-daughter” means of support, but his pitiful state is not exactly a turn-on for her. Meanwhile, a younger actor-screenwriter is also trying to extract some dramatic truth from real-life for his latest script, but he is more direct and honest about his exploitative intentions than Areum, if that is indeed what she is doing.

At just sixty-six minutes, Grass (reportedly, the title does not really mean anything) is definitely a shorty from Hong, but it still provides sufficient time for the characters to get good and drunk on soju. He also manages to burrow quite deeply into their psyches. It is almost like a Hong Sang-soo lightning round, in which he tries to introduce each character and establish the source of their psychological hang-ups with the greatest possible economy.

While these are familiar themes for Hong, it is rather fascinating to watch his muse Kim Min-hee playing something like his analog as the voyeuristic Areum. She also has the sort of churlish jealousy we would expect from Hong’s shallow make characters when she is confronted with the happiness of her younger brother and his fiancée. Likewise, Jung Jin-young is slyly charming as Kyung-soo the actor-screenwriter, who sort of represents the more confident and defiantly indulgent side of Hong’s persona.

Despite all the emotional baggage of its clientele, the Grass café looks like a wonderfully inviting place for some coffee and people-watching. It is a small Hong film, even by his talky, light-weight standards, but it has its merits. In fact, it might be one of the better films of his less playful, post-Yourself and Yours, inspired-by-scandalous-real-life-events period. Recommended for Hong’s admirers and patrons of sharply observed psychological drama, Grass opens this Friday (4/19) in New York, at the Metrograph.

Hong Sang-soo’s Hotel by the River

This quiet hotel on the banks of the Han River ought to be a perfect spot for a secret assignation, but its guests are working through the bitter aftermaths of their affairs instead. It has been a long process for aging poet Ko Younghwan. He might never fully repair his relationships with the grown sons he walked out on decades ago, because he is convinced he will soon die in Hong Sang-soo’s Hotel by the River (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Ko is weirdly famous for a poet (quick, name a living poet—any living poet), but apparently he is sufficiently respected for the owner of the hotel to offer him a free room. It seems the freeloading Ko has overstayed his welcome, but he really does not expect to be around much longer. Having had premonitions of his imminent death, Ko summoned his semi-estranged sons, Kyung-soo and Byung-soo, but he immediately regretted it. He fears their reunion will be too awkward, even by the low standards of a character in a Hong Sang-soo film.

On the other hand, Ko is quite taken with Sang-hee and her friend Yeon-ju. The former has checked into the hotel to recover from the heartbreak of a recent affair cut short by her married lover, as well as the Nathaniel Hawthorne-esque burn she subsequently suffered on her hand. This relationship clearly echoes that of lead actress Kim Min-hee’s scandalous involvement with Hong himself, as well as the uncomfortably meta affair that collapses around her character in On the Beach at Night Alone. However, in this case, the focus falls on Ko, who was rather ironically dumped by the woman he left his family for, decades ago. Yet, he regrets nothing.

One of the knocks on Hong is the alleged “slightness” of his films, but in Hotel, he is dealing with some serious themes of mortality and redemption. However, some consistencies remain, such as the ultra-neurotic nature of his characters and their capacity to guzzle down alcohol.

As Ko, Ki Joo-bong creates a marvelous humanistic portrait of a flawed man in the twilight of his life. He is simultaneously guilt-ridden and defiant, in a way that is quite compelling. This time around, Kim takes a backseat to Ko, but also largely defers to Song Seon-mi, who really gets most of the film’s laughs as Yeon-ju. The consoling friend ruthlessly roasts the immaturity of the man-children who populate Hong’s world, but she can’t dismissed as anti-male, because her husband is different. In fact, the unseen, unnamed fellow is apparently too healthy to appear in a Hong Sang-soo film.

Obviously, that cannot be said for Kyung-soo and Byung-soo, who are classic Hong archetypes, especially the latter, who is a conspicuously Hong-like uncommercial indie film director. Yet, Yu Jun-sang’s coolly reserved performance is consistently upstaged by Kwon Hae-hyo’s more angsty work as the messily human Kyung-soo, who inherited most of his father’s physical shortcomings and personality hang-ups, but none of his talent.

Hotel is very much in keeping with recent Hong films, particularly The Day After and On the Beach, in terms of their common themes and lack of the narrative playfulness that marked his earlier films. This is arguably his most mature work to date, but films like Hill of Freedom were a lot more fun. Regardless, it is rewarding to watch Ko, Kwon, Kim, and Song in a stripped down chamber-piece. Kim Hyung-koo’s stark black-and-white cinematography, perfectly suited to the snowy backdrop, also makes this the best-looking Hong film since The Day He Arrives. Respectfully recommended for Hong’s admirers and fans of talky relationship dramas, Hotel by the River opens today (2/15) in New York.

Hong Sang-soo’s Claire’s Camera

It is a film about random café encounters in Cannes, partly made possible by a random café encounter in Cannes. Architect Shahira Fahmy happened to tell Hong Sang-soo about her acting ambitions when they struck up a conversation in a café during the Cannes Film Festival. A few hours later, she was shooting a scene with Isabelle Huppert. It wasn’t a hugely consequential scene, but it is still a good start. It is also very Hong Sang-soo. Indeed, a chance encounter of that nature would not be out of place in the film in question, Hong’s Claire’s Camera (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Camera could be considered the third film in the awkward trilogy of films helmed by Hong and starring Kim Min-hee, addressing unfaithfulness and released after news of their affair went public. This is the best of the three. The explicit reference to Eric Rohmer (director of Claire’s Knee) is no accident. Camera is very Rohmeresque. His characters wander incessantly, but this is a Hong film, so they also drink, especially, So Hansoo, the Hong-esque director.

Jeon Manhee is about to be fired by her boss, producer-sales agent Nam Yanghye, soon after their arrival in Cannes, because she ill-advisedly let So sleep with her. So isn’t just talent they are handling. He is also Nam’s lover—or at least he was. He intends to break it off once their French guest at lunch takes her leave. That would be Claire, a charming music teacher, who also writes poetry and compulsively takes pictures. She came down from Paris for the premiere of her friend’s film (played by Fahmy), but while strolling through town, she makes the chance acquaintances of both Jeon and So, who are quite struck by the coincidence when they see the photographic evidence of Claire’s encounters.

At a mere sixty-nine minutes, Camera feels light and brief, but there are some heady themes lurking under the surface and some heavy emotions bubbling over. While there is little of Hong’s previous narrative gamesmanship, he rather subtly and slyly proves Claire’s vaguely postmodern contention that the act of taking someone’s picture changes them. This is definitely true in the case of Jeon and So.

Claire is a nice change of pace for Huppert (reuniting with Hong after In Another Country), but she still commands the screen utterly and completely. After watching Camera, everyone should be convinced it would be great fun to café-hop your way across Cannes with her. Kim’s work as Jeon is just as sensitively rendered as her award-winning performance in On the Beach at Night Alone, but she also shows a bit of goofy humor that is wonderfully sweet and endearing. Jung Jin-young’s So is basically an amalgamation of every unpleasant Hong Sang-soo cliché, but Chang Mi-hee is surprisingly human and vulnerable as the ragingly insecure Nam. Plus, there is a big gray dog who steals several scenes, even though he literally sleeps through them.

Claire’s Camera is vintage Hong and a lovely showcase for Huppert and Kim. It just captures that indescribable late-night vibe. Surely, Rohmer would have approved. Very highly recommended, Claire’s Camera opens this Friday (3/9) in New York, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

NYFF ’17: On the Beach at Night Alone

Hong Sang-soo is often dubbed the “Korean Woody Allen,” but that superficial comparison was never really that apt, until now. Hong’s extramarital relationship with thirty-something actress Kim Min-hee (star of Right Now, Wrong Then) is nowhere near as problematic as Allen carrying on with his long-term girlfriend’s adopted daughter, but the resulting Korean scandal has been even more intense. Adding fuel to the fire, Hong finally acknowledged the relationship at a press conference for one of his three most recent films, in which an actress played by Kim herself deals with the fallout resulting from her affair with a prestigious director. You could think of it as Hong’s Husbands and Wives. Regardless, the meta-ness is often downright uncomfortable in On the Beach at Night Alone (trailer here), which screens as a Main Slate selection of the 55^th New York Film Festival.

Even though she is still young, Young-hee’s acting career was already in the doldrums before her affair with Sang-won. To avoid the media feeding frenzy, she first visits her friend Jee-young in Hamburg and then tries laying low in her provincial small town. She walks incessantly, while her friends do their best to distract her. Yet, she compulsively ruminates on her scandal, yearning to see him again, yet deeply regretting their affair.

Throw in a prodigious amount of drinking and you pretty much have Hong’s film in a nutshell. Of course, there is more to it than that. However, much like The Day After, Beach, lacks the narrative gamesmanship that has distinguished Hong’s best recent films. Arguably, there is still a bifurcated structure, split between Hamburg and Korea, but it follows in strict chronological order.

Kim is quite arresting playing a slightly unstable analog of herself, but her exquisitely sensitive performance in The Day After is even more accomplished and arresting. Arguably, the finest work in the film comes from Seo Young-hwa, who charms and disarms as the complex but defiantly independent Jee-young. Kwon Hae-hyo exemplifies an exemplary Hong supporting character as Young-hee’s shaggy haired, hard-drinking art-house programmer crony Chun-woo. As if we needed additional layers of irony, actor-turned-politician Moon Sung-keun memorably appears as the adulterous Sang-won.

Beach is a revealingly personal film that will loom large for anyone studying Hong and his oeuvre. Nevertheless, it is not one of his more rewarding films. Kim Min-hee and Seo Young-hwa do nice work, but they cannot dispel the awkward vibe. Even viewers not hip to the behind-the-scenes drama will pick up on it. If you only see one Hong Sang-soo film at this year’s NYFF, it should definitely be The Day After. Recommended mostly for dedicated Hong and Kim fans, On the Beach at Night Alone screens tomorrow (10/8) and Monday (10/9), as part of this year’s New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’17: The Day After

Sure, there are exceptions, but by and large, people working in book publishing are ragingly neurotic and they drink like fish. Could there be another film director better suited to making a film set in a high-brow small press than Hong Sang-soo? In this case, the publisher also happens to be an unrepentant adulterer. Again, who better than Hong? News of his extramarital affair has scandalized Korea, but it has not slowed Hong’s prolific output. He has two new films at this year’s NYFF (how they missed out on Claire’s Camera starring fest fave Isabelle Huppert is rather baffling). Hong dials down the narrative gamesmanship in The Day After (trailer here), the less uncomfortably awkward of his two Main Slates selections screening at the 55^th New York Film Festival.

Song Ah-reum is the sort of thoughtful, responsible employee a boutique literary house would be lucky to employ. Kim Bong-wan hired her because she was pretty. He just let his former assistant go, because his wife Song Hae-joo was starting to suspect they were having an affair, which they were. Unfortunately, Song Hae-joo storms into the office to deliver the Dynasty power-slap to her rival on Song Ah-reum’s first day.

Understandably, the new assistant is rather taken aback by the jealous wife’s torrent of abuse. Kim tries to convince her to stay despite the drama, until his former mistress-assistant Lee Chang-sook drops by to rekindle their affair. Since Song Hae-joo has never seen Lee, they hatch a scheme to return the real mistress to her former job, by pretending Song Ahreum really was the other woman, if she will agree to leave after only one day. It is not a particularly well thought out master-plan, but it evidently involves drinking a great deal of soju.

Even by Hong’s standards, Day After is small in scope, but it has a rarified air of sophistication and an unusually sharp edge. Somewhat ironically, the unfairly accused Song is played by Kim Min-hee, who has been absolutely pilloried in the Korean press after she and Hong came out with their relationship. Seriously, think Pitt-Anniston-Jolie raised to the power of fifty.

It is a shame outside events will inevitably color people’s perception of Day After, because this really is one of Kim’s finest performances. It is a wonderfully subtle and graceful turn. Ironically, you would expect such a wise and forgiving portrayal to come at the end of an affair rather than at the high point of media scrutiny.

As usual, Hong regular Kwon Hae-hyo is a gently amusing bundle of anxieties and hang-ups as the philandering Kim Bong-wan. Think of him as a Seinfeld character you could actually spend time with, especially with the soju flowing. He and Kim Min-hee share some wonderfully gawky scenes together. You could call it anti-chemistry, but they still play off each other beautifully.

Throughout Day After, Hong skewers male vanity and the hypocritical pretensions of the literary smart set. Kim Hyung-ku’s warm, glowing black-and-white cinematography also greatly heightens the feeling of intimacy. However, Hong fans will miss the narrative eccentricities of his recent films, like Hill of Freedom, Yourself and Yours, and Right Now, Wrong Then (also starring Kim Min-hee). Some might interpret it as an apology or a case of protesting too much, but we see it as a fair representation of book publishing. Recommended for admirers of Hong and literate, chamber dramas, The Day After screens tomorrow (10/7), Sunday (10/8), and the following Sunday (10/15) as part of this year’s NYFF.

NYFF ’16: Yourself and Yours

There is something wonderfully reassuring about the arrival of a new Hong Sang-soo film each year. Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, all is right with the world when his lovelorn Korean film students and slackers get roaring drunk and tell contradictory lies. Uncharacteristically for a Hong film, Young-soo is trying to limit his girlfriend Min-jung to just two soju shots and five beers a night, which would probably be sufficient to knock W.C. Fields on his keister. Regardless, she is done with controlling behavior as are the other Min-jungs in Hong’s Yourself and Yours (trailer here), which screens during the 54^th New York Film Festival.

Young-soo should be concerned about his dying mother, the news from a gossipy friend was getting hammered last night with a man other than himself has him beside himself. When confronted, Min-jung initially denies the rumor before up and leaving him. Young-soo quickly realizes his mistake, but she is already gone.

Soon thereafter, two of Young-soo’s acquaintances run into Min-jung on separate occasions, but she professes not to know them or the Young-soo fellow they keep talking about. After sulking for a bit, Young-soo heads off in search of Min-jung, but when he finds her, she no longer recognizes him or his said friends. It is all rather confusing for everyone except Min-jung or her doppelgangers or whatever, but it hardly seems to matter. In fact, it might just be a good thing, allowing Young-soo the first of many fresh starts.

Arguably, Y&Y is like a smarter, gently inebriated Korean analog of Adam Sandler’s 50 First Dates, but instead of a challenge to overcome, the necessity of constant reintroduction is a liberating blessing. Regardless, it provides an opportunity for some tartly neurotic dialogue and appealingly woozy performances.

Lee Yoo-young is quite charming as Min-yung, but she also shows considerable emotional range as she deals with the full spectrum of Young-soo’s male angst. From her lips words of truth fall like spring raindrops in the afternoon. As her assorted temporary admirers, Yuu Jun-sang and Kwon Hae-hyo are appropriately bemused and befuddled. Frankly, Kim Ju-hyeok’s whiny tone wears a little thin, but he develops some deeply complex chemistry with Lee’s Min-yung[s].

Along with the deliciously arch Right Now, Wrong Then and Hill of Freedom, Yourself and Yours represents a richly fertile artistic period for Hong. He continues to explore relationships and the Korean male psyche, while playing sly narrative games with his complicit audience without ever appreciably repeating himself. If only Woody Allen, whom he used to be regularly compared with were as reliably consistent and inventive. It is a good introduction to Hong’s aesthetic for first time viewers and a satisfying tumbler full of new brew for his fans. Highly recommended for both groups, Yourself and Yours screens this Friday (10/7) as well as the 10^th, 14^th, and 16^th, as a Main Slate selection of the 2016 NYFF.

NYFF ’15: Right Now, Wrong Then

Ham Chun-su is definitely the sort of director who needs more than one take. That is just as true of his own life as it is with his films. Strictly speaking, he will not know he is replaying his visit to a modestly prestigious film festival. The ultimate results will not vary so drastically either, but sweet regrets are much nicer than sour ones in Hong Sang-soo’s Right Now, Wrong Then (trailer here), which screens as a Main Slate selection of the 53^rd New York Film Festival.

Through miscommunication, Ham has come to Suwon one day before his film screens, but we doubt he had anything better to do. While killing time, he finds himself drawn to the shrine at Hwaseong Haeng-gung palace, possibly because Yoon Hee-jung is also a frequent visitor there. Despite his awkwardness, Ham strikes up a conversation, learning she is a former model who has forsaken her former life to become a fulltime painter. She is therefore impressed to learn he is an art-house film director transparently based on Hong.

Ham manages to spend the rest of the day and most of the night with her, but the drunker he gets, the more he sabotages himself. What was once a reasonably pleasant ships-passing encounter turns out to be rather disappointing and uncomfortable for all parties. Take two. Everything happens more or less the same, yet it is different. Yoon initially seems sadder, but Ham is more honest. Of course, since this is a Hong Sang-soo film, he gets just as drunk.

If you enjoy Hong’s films, you will flip for RNWT, because it represents the filmmaker at his Hong Sang-soo-iest. On the other hand, those who are not so into him might still give it a shot, because it is much less mannered and considerably more resonate than many of his prior films. Still, all his hallmarks are present and accounted for. It is a defiantly talky film, featuring a filmmaker protagonist and a bountiful stream of booze—so what’s not to like?

As the smitten Ham, Jang Jin-regular Jung Jae-young shows he also has the stuff to hang in Hong’s neurotic world. It is fascinating to see how dramatically he alters the colors and shadings of his performance with one small twist of the dial. While Kim Min-hee is just as understated, she lights up the screen with her sensitive, luminous presence. It is a wonderfully wise and sad performance that gets richer the second time through, even though her character remains in essentially the same headspace.

In RNWT, Hong captures the impressionistic sense of a late night spent with an almost complete stranger that you wish would never end almost as vividly as Zhang Lu’s Gyeongju (which is an absolutely terrific film). As with his previous film Hill of Freedom, Hong engages on an emotional level in RNWT, rather than just playing narrative games and reveling in clever banter. Bittersweet and subtle (two qualities that do not go together so often), Right Now, Wrong Then is recommended for those who appreciate mature relationship dramedies when it screens this Friday (10/9) at the Walter Reade and Saturday (10/10) at the Beale, as part of the 2015 NYFF.

NYFF ’14: Hill of Freedom

Why would a visitor from Japan spend so much time in Korean at a Japanese coffee shop? He is a Hong Sang-soo character, which explains a lot. As it happens, he is not in Korea to see the sights. He has come to woe back an ex-girlfriend. Unfortunately, she was not waiting to be wooed in Hong’s Hill of Freedom (trailer here), one of the Main Slate selections of the 52^nd New York Film Festival.

Two years after Kwon dumped him, Mori has returned to Korea on spec, hoping to win back his former language school colleague. Finding her out of town left him at loose ends. Despite his intentions, Mori kind of-sort of gets involved with the characters at his Bukchon guest house and the Hill of Freedom coffee shop across the street from Kwon’s apartment. He even has a halting romance with Young-sun, the coffee shop manager. He will explain to Kwon just how he spent his time in Seoul in a series of letters he leaves for her at their old school. However, after dropping the untidy bundle, Kwon will read and the audience will see Mori’s story out of sequence.

Although it is an unusually concise sixty-seven minutes, Hill could still be considered a perfectly representative Hong Sang-soo film. The Korean festival favorite instills the proceedings with a bittersweet vibe, but it is more neurotic than sentimental. It is all about connections made and broken, told with a gentle narrative gamesmanship to keep us on our toes.

Ironically, South Korean most likely could not have submitted Hill as their foreign language Oscar submission, because nearly all the film is English, or rather the stiff, formal version of English that serves as an awkward lingua franca for the Japanese and Korean characters. That would presumably present some acting challenges, yet it seems to play to the strengths of sad-eyed, American-reared Japanese movie-star, Ryô Kase. He measures his words and plugs away in understated fashion, as a good Hong protagonist should.

It is a strong supporting cast all around, particularly including Moon So-ri’s remarkably open and vulnerable Young-sun. Korean cinema’s grand dame and Hong regular Youn Yuh-jung also adds some salty vinegar as the tart-tongued landlady. There are also the brief but memorable supporting turns from various visitors to the guest-house that seem to practically fall out of the sky.

If you like Hong Sang-soo movies, this is a very good one. It certainly captures the zone of futility, where romantic frustration leads to exhaustion, ennui, and confusion. Characteristically sly, Hill of Freedom is recommended for those who appreciate Hong’s intellectually advanced relationship chamber dramedies when it screens this coming Tuesday (9/30) at the Walter Reade and Wednesday (10/8) at the Gillman, as part of this year’s NYFF Main Slate.

Hong Sang-soo’s In Another Country

In the working class seaside village of Mohang, there is not a lot to do except drink.  Fortunately, that is what Hong Sang-soo’s characters do best.  Intimacy on the other hand is a problem, especially for a trio of French women stumbling through cultural and linguistic barriers.  Isabelle Huppert plays all three of them in Hong’s sort of English language debut, In Another Country (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Dodging debt collectors, film student Wonju and her mother are laying low in a sleepy Mohang inn.  To pass the time, she starts writing a screenplay very much in the style of Hong Sang-soo.  It is a triptych in which the French expat Anne comes to the very same hotel under different circumstances, yet has similar experiences each time.

The first Anne is an accomplished filmmaker, who tries to discourage the attentions of a drunken colleague with a very pregnant wife.  The second Anne is cheating on her wealthy husband with an almost famous film director.  The third Anne bitterly resents her ex-husband leaving her for a Korean woman, but it is not hard to understand why he dumped her.  In each case, she flirts with the meathead lifeguard with varying degrees of ambiguity, half communicating through their broken English.

Country is just so Hong Sang-soo, but the tone is a bit lighter than Oki’s Movie or The Day He Arrives.  Nor is it as self consciously post-modern in its approach to narrative.  Each of the three Annes’ stories are discrete and completely self contained (though take 2 includes a dream sequence that could almost count as a fourth strand).  In fact, it is a rather sunny film, taking long walks on the beach and chatting amiably with the cute but shy Wonju, who also appears in each arc as the daughter of the hotel proprietor.

Still, it is rather fascinating to watch Huppert brings successively darker shades to each Anne.  Frankly, the third is a bit of a pill, whereas the flawed but self-aware second is the most fully developed.  Yu Junsang, the only other constant besides Jung Yumi’s pleasant but rather inconsequential Wonju, is a perfectly believable lunk, but his best dramatic moments come during the first go-round.  However, Youn Yuh-jung, the veteran leading lady of Korean television and cinema, is absolutely perfect as Anne #3’s academic friend Park Sook (and appearing as Wonju’s mother in the opening segmentas well).  Smart, somewhat tart tongued, and likably world weary, she brings some real verve to the talking and drinking.

Indeed, Country is a chatty film, utilizing English as a second language, so communication is always an issue.  The manner in which Hong repeats certain key phrases is often very droll, but there are no great profundities to be found here.  That is not necessarily a bad thing.  Watching Hong’s latest is like falling in with a group of strangers at a party who are amusing for an evening, but you don’t really want to make a habit of seeing afterward.  Again, if they are good for some laughs, that is not so terrible.  For Hong and Huppert’s fans, it works quite well.  Recommended accordingly, In Another Country opens this Friday (11/9) at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.

Hong Sang-soo’s The Day He Arrives

Yoo Seong-jun is a failed indie director turned provincial film school teacher. He is strangely ambivalent about the apparent end of his filmmaking career, making him a rather odd sort of-kind of surrogate for Hong Sang-soo, one of Korea’s busiest directors in recent years. Though Hong’s prior American distribution has been spotty at best, he will make up for lost time this week, with two new releases hitting New York theaters. Following yesterday’s opening of Oki’s Movie at the Maysles Cinema, Hong’s subsequent film, The Day He Arrives (trailer here), opens this Friday at the Lincoln Plaza.

Yoo is a loser and he knows it, at least to some extent. Visiting Seoul, he tries to meet-up with his old friend, film critic Young-ho, but connections are always a dicey business in Hong’s films. Aimlessly wandering the streets, patterns start to emerge. He keeps crossing the path of an actress he knows causally and has an awkward series of run-ins with a group of film students. Inevitably, he turns up at his ex-girlfriend Kyung-jin’s apartment for a reunion that will be not be healthy for anyone.

The next day, he rendezvouses with Young-ho, who brings along his ambiguously platonic friend Boram, who clearly has eyes for Yoo. However, Yoo is only interested in Yejeon, the beautiful proprietor of the bar Young-ho frequents (called “Novel”), who is the spitting image of Kyung-jin. Once again, the patterns of the night before will repeat, but under different circumstances.

Hong’s Day is an intentionally extreme example of the way people repeat certain mistakes throughout their lives and relationships. In this respect, it is a fitting companion film to Oki’s Movie, even though it is strictly linear and nowhere near as mischievous in its approach to narrative. The empty bottles of booze also pile up quickly in both films.

Hong is often dubbed something like the Woody Allen of Korea. In way, the comparison is particularly apt in Day, in which Yoo, a sullen failure, attracts the attention of at least four attractive women (played by three actresses).  Day is a darker film than his previous outing, whose characters all seem to lack a sense of self-awareness, but it is often quite witty, with the occasional flash of genuine insight.

Despite the problematic nature of both her on-screen relationships, the luminous Kim Bok-yung gives exquisitely sensitive performances as Yejeon and Kyung-jin. Yu Jun-sang’s Yoo is something of a cipher (by design), but he portrays his erratic self-absorbed self-defeating behavior solidly enough. In support, Kim Sang-joong and Song Sunmi exhibit a real flair for Hong’s wicked dialogue and their characters’ ever escalating inebriation, as Young-ho and Boram, respectively.

Shot by cinematographer Kim Hyung-koo in a deliberately drab black-and-white that makes Seoul look like the DPRK in winter, Day definitely has a touch of the absurd. Yet, despite the doppelgangers and obsessive repetitions, it is still a film about relationships, which makes it relatively accessible to general audiences. Recommended for fans of Hong and the films Woody Allen made during bouts of depression, The Day He Arrives opens this Friday (4/20) at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.

Hong Sang-soo’s Oki’s Movie

They say one should write about what you know. Hong Sang-soo knows about film school, or at least his characters do. Their lives and films freely blur and overlap in his sort of but not really braided-story film, Oki’s Movie (trailer here), which opens this Monday at the Maysles Cinema as something of a ringer in their Documentary in Bloom film series.

Oki’s Movie is actually four short films featuring the same cast of characters or characters based on them. When we first meet Jingu in A Day for Incantation, he is a young film school instructor with a handful of less than enthusiastically received short films to his record. After psyching himself up to face a new day, he gets far too drunk at a faculty lunch, offending the department chairman, Professor Song, before leaving for a disastrous screening of one of his shorts. As King of Kisses opens, it would appear Incantation is Jingu’s thesis project, which Professor Song praises effusively. In fact, Jingu seems to be one of his favorites, but the student is more interested in wooing Oki, oblivious to her clearly implied relationship with Song.

In the sketchiest segment, After the Snowstorm, Song questions his academic career when only Oki and Jingu brave a snowstorm for his class. For their efforts, he entertains their meaning-of-life questions, answering with canned profundities. However, Oki’s Movie rebounds with the concluding titlle segment, in which Oki compares and contrasts two trips she took to Acha Mountain, first with Song and then with Jingu. Demonstrating a fascination with repeated cycles, Oki’s Movie, the sub-film, nicely leads into Hong’s The Day He Arrives, which as luck would have it, opens next Friday in New York.

Instinctively, viewers will want to impose a sequential order on Oki Movie, presumably beginning with the characters in their present day, followed by three successive flashbacks. However, Hong deliberately problematizes such linearity by consciously presenting the opening and closing segments as films-within-films (emphasized with their separate but identical credit sequences), with Oki apparently appearing as an actress in Jingu’s A Day for Incantation.

Despite his narrative puzzle-making, Hong is often compared to Woody Allen and it is easy to see why throughout drily witty Oki’s Movie. While his three major characters all rather self-centered and neurotic, he never judges them too harshly. Indeed, there are even moments of biting self-awareness, particularly from Oki, but also to a lesser extent from Song, rendered as an almost tragic figure in Oki’s short. By American standards, it is also a bit politically incorrect, deriving gleeful humor from the outrageous things said as a result of inebriation. While Hong never moralizes, he certainly shows the repercussions of over-indulgence.

Indeed, Hong is a master at depicting incidents of social awkwardness and the human foibles that magnify them. Lee Sun-kyun is quite the convincing blindered sad sack, but manages to keep Jingu relatively grounded. In contrast, Jung Yumi is a consistently intelligent and intriguing screen presence as Oki, the reluctant femme fatale.

In a sense, Hong represents the road too often not taken by postmodernists. Like his thematically related short Lost in the Mountains and his forthcoming The Day He Arrives, Oki is light and droll rather than dour and didactic. Even with its eccentric structure, it is a highly accessible film suitable for viewers who usually confine their international cinema patronage to relationship comedies in the French tradition. Solidly entertaining, Oki’s Movie is definitely worth a trip uptown when it screens Monday (4/16) through Sunday (4/22) at the Maysles Cinema.

ContemporAsian Shorts

Some short films are relatively long and complex, compared to others that are mere comedic sketches. However, some shorts can feel longer than they really are, especially for those unaccustomed to experimental filmmaking. Such might be the case for some patrons sampling the short film program screening this week as part of MoMA’s ongoing ContemporAsian series.

Almost perversely, MoMA has programmed this short film program in increasing order of accessibility, starting with the most demanding selection, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s narrative-free Letter to Uncle Boonmee. For hardcore cineastes, this might be the biggest draw, serving as an impressionistic prelude to his Palme d’Or winning narrative feature Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall Past Lives, which screens at the upcoming New York Film Festival. Consisting of long artful tracking shots of Weerasethakul’s provincial quarters, it might baffle more literal minded audiences. After all, the house is not Boonmee’s. It does not even look similar, according to Weerasethakul’s voice-over, but it is still a house in a hardscrabble “peasant” community, so it evidently brings the filmmaker’s uncle to mind.

At least, Tsai Ming-liang’s Madam Butterfly has an identifiable narrative structure, but the great Taiwanese auteur’s deliberate pacing and intimate close-ups may tire viewers acclimated to Michael Bay-style filmmaking. A radical recasting of the Puccini story, we watch as a woman deals with the abandonment of her lover in a Kuala Lumpur bus station. However, for those with grown-up sensibilities, Pearlly Chua’s largely improvised performance is quite affecting.

It is quite a statement to say Jia Zhangke’s contribution has one of the stronger narrative drives of the program, but there it is. His eloquent Cry Me a River is sort of a fifteen minute crystallization of The Big Chill, without the now clichéd reliance on classic rock to set the mood. Four former classmates have returned to Suzhou to celebrate their former professor’s birthday, but they are really there to reconnect with old flames.

Though inspired by Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town, even viewers familiar with the pre-PRC classic (banned after 1949 for being insufficiently political) might not automatically recognize it as such. However, both involve former lovers coming together after a long separation to come to terms with their regrets. It is one of his more elegant films, again distinguished by a moving performance by his frequent muse, the lovely Zhao Tao.

Unfortunately, many of those who walked out during the first two films Friday night would probably have enjoyed Hong Sang-soo’s Lost in the Mountains had they stayed. Like River, Lost also involves former students visiting their ex-professor, but Misook was amorously involved with the married man. Returning on a spur of the moment visit, she is appalled to discover her best friend Jin-young has taken up with the old lecher. Not thinking clearly, she proceeds to drag another former lover in to the awkward reunion.

Often very witty in a truthful, cutting way, Lost is a film general audiences can easily relate to. In addition to being cute, Yumi Jung is convincingly over-wrought but also quite funny as Misook. Indeed, it is a fine comedic-dramatic ensemble piece, nicely turned by its four principals.

All four directors are important filmmakers and each selection is a noteworthy film. However, the program order should have been reversed. While Lost is a thoroughly satisfying film and River has a strange quiet power of its own, Letter is a tough sell to all except true film fest diehards. Well worth checking out and sticking with, the ContemporAsian shorts screen at MoMA through Thursday (9/16).