Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on Hong Sang-soo

Another piece on Hong:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/hong-sang-soos-spatial-quirks-or-wheres-that-piano

Cinetracks radio show on Arirang

Tomorrow at Midnight (technically Wednesday 12:00 am Korean time) I will appear on the Arirang radio show Cinetracks for their Spotlight section. This will be a weekly segment, focusing on a different Korean director or actor each week. This week's director is Hong Sang-soo.

If you are in Canada, it will air Tuesday at noon in the Maritimes, 11 am in Quebec/Ontario. The link is below. There is also an iphone/android app that will allow you to listen. 

 http://www.arirang.co.kr/Radio/Radio_Index.asp?sys_lang=Eng 

Hong Sang-soo and Slacker Cinema

A good piece over at salon.com on "slacker" cinema, with a discussion of Hong Sang-soo's THE DAY HE ARRIVES.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/the_day_he_arrives_slacker_cinema_asian_style/

A Hong Sang-Soo Primer

As a contribution to the Korean Cinema Blogathon and as an ode to the great AV Club "Primer" series of beginner guides to pop culture subjects, I decided to offer an overview of a decidedly non-pop filmmaker: the Korean master Hong Sang-soo. Also, given that I have a presentation on Hong to give in a couple of weeks, I thought writing about the totality of his work would be a good exercise.

Hong 101

I saw my first Hong film just over four years ago, beginning with his 1996 debut, The Day a Pig Fell in the Well, which established many of Hong's recurrent characters and themes: there is a artist, Hyo-Seop, a writer, involved with two women: Min-jae, a younger woman who worships him, and Bo-gyeong, an older married woman. The film also follows Bo-gyeong's husband, Dong-u, as well as Min-su, a disturbed young man infatuated with Min-jae. The difficulty of male-female relationships, as well as the doubling and overlapping structure, certainly established a pattern for Hong's future work, but in many other ways it is atypical. This is true of both the dark, menacing tone and the rather expressive editing style. Similar to other "network" movies featuring large ensembles interconnecting, The Day a Pig Fell in the Well feels grander and more didactic in its themes than anything that would follow. As Hong's career moves forward, his tone begins to lighten, his editing style begins to slow, and meaning becomes more allusive.

2002's Turning Gate, Hong's fourth feature, is the first to follow a single protagonist, the actor Gyeong-su, as he has a relationship with two different women. Long takes now dominate Hong's style, and while there are some repetitions, the structural rigor of the first three films has been loosened. There are those who consider this one of Hong's masterworks, but I'm not among them. For me, Hong is at his least interesting when dwelling upon a single male character and making him the major focus. This is probably because his male characters feel like such dead-ends and showing the follies of these men has only limited value. For all their flaws, the women in Hong's work provide most of the energy and interest.

A major transitional text, if for me another of his lesser works, is 2005's A Tale of Cinema. This is the first Hong film to make filmmaking an explicit theme while continuing to explore his interest in dysfunctional couples and repetitions. The film director Dong-su watches a short film by his senior director Hyeong-su. The second half features Dong-su pursuing the actress of that film, Yeong-sil. With A Tale of Cinema, Hong introduces a new stylistic device: the zoom. With his previous film, Woman is the Future of Man, Hong made almost no movement into a scene, playing out the entire film in a long shot, long take style. The zoom allows Hong to maintain his long take style and yet still provide some variation in shot scale, but he also uses the zoom in a peculiar way. It is both very self-reflexive, as even the least sophisticated viewer cannot help but notice each zoom, and also strangely un-expressive in any traditional sense. One not only notices the zoom, but usually has a difficult time deciphering its meaning.



A Tale of Cinema at the same time marks a departure for Hong in that after this film, he would no longer feature explicit sex scenes. Much has been made of how "unsexy" Hong's films are, that despite (or maybe because?) of the explicit sex scenes the films had little erotic appeal. I think this is at best an overstatement and at worse a typical art cinema denial of any kind of bodily pleasure. Since its inception, art cinema has traded on erotic appeal, and likewise, since its beginning, critics have downplayed its importance. Certainly, many of the sex scenes of Hong's first six features have moments of uncomfortable sex that is presented more realistically than the usual smoothness of the sex acts in most movies. But couldn't it be argued that this very realism, this quotidian sexuality, gives it a different kind of erotic charge, different but nevertheless still real and potent? It's also worth noting that the elimination of explicit sex has not eliminated eroticism from his art, but has merely shifted its emphasis, making it more suggestive (and thus more traditionally "erotic").


Intermediate Work

Hong's oeuvre can be largely categorized as comedic, especially his more recent work (the removal of explicit and usually unsettling sex has perhaps helped this). It's hard to find an exact point when the comedic turn really takes hold, but 2006's follow-up to A Tale of Cinema, Woman on the Beach, seemed to establish a transition into a lighter tone and a less formally rigorous structure. Not that the repetitions are not still there, but overall the films feel less like a puzzle than some of the earlier work. Woman on the Beach is not a particularly difficult film to grasp or understand, which is not to say that it isn't as thought-provoking in its own way. Rather, the ideas become more explicitly discussed by characters, and the audience has to participate in the dialogue rather than making pieces fit. It may also be the first Hong film with a rather upbeat ending, and one in which a female character (played by the great Go Hyeon-jeong, who would appear in two later Hong films) almost takes over the narrative from the male protagonist.

Continuing in this comedic vein is 2008's Night and Day, which mostly takes place in Paris. The lead character, the painter Seong-nam, cannot return to Korea for fear of being arrested for having smoked marijuana (the harshness of drug penalties being more severe than the West). Separated from his wife, he begins an affair with a fellow ex-pat art student. Probably the Hong film that shows the biggest influence of Eric Rohmer and Luis Bunuel, Night and Day disappeared after its original release for a few years, and only recently has become available again on home video. I saw the film at the 2008 Jeonju film festival, and was my first Hong film seen with an audience. The very positive reaction to the movie, especially its comedy, gave me a better feel for how to approach Hong going forward, and even to reconsider the earlier films.

Hong would continue in this comedic tone with his next two films, 2009's Like You Know It All and 2010's Hahaha. Like You Know It All reunited Hong with actor Kim Tae-woo, who plays an art cinema director who spends the first half of the film on a festival jury and the second half visiting a university in Jeju Island to give a lecture. This is obviously a world Hong knows very well, and the character of Kyeongnam is the closest to a Hong surrogate that we have seen. Hahaha also has some clear autobiographical elements, especially given the fact that it is set near his own hometown. Here the comedy turns almost farcical, and Hong's deconstruction of masculinity is at its most thorough. Again, it is the women who really provide the interest, especially Moon So-ri, working with Hong for the first time, in one of the lead roles. While both of these films are enjoyable, they did seem to be traversing some of the same ground Hong had been exploring since Woman on the Beach. Although I do not think the criticism that Hong is repetitive holds much water, I was glad that Hong tried something a bit different in tone and scale with his two most recent films.

Advanced Studies

Although one of the least discussed of Hong's films, 1998's The Power of Kangwon Province is one of the more structurally complex works of his career. The first half shows us the journey of Ji-suk, who is traveling with her friends and trying to get over a recently ended love affair with a married man, Sang-gwon. The second half shows Sang-gwon's journey to the same location, although the two don't meet until the film's conclusion. The two halves of the film fit together in an alternating pattern when the story is reconstructed. Perhaps its only equal in terms of narrative complexity is his next film, 2000's The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors. This film's narrative has been debated, with some viewing it as an art cinema-style Rashomon case, in which first the male and then the female character give their perspective. However, others, most notably Hong scholar Marshall Deutelbaum, insist that each scene only plays once, and that in the film's second half we are simply getting different time perspective. Thus, it is not a question of one character or another getting sick, but rather both characters getting sick at different times of the same evening. This argument is compelling, showing how Hong is trying to get his audience to not think in simple art cinema cliches. But there is at least one sequence, and a key one, which is shown from two different perspectives. It is thus not clear that Hong isn't deploying an dual perspective narrative, or at least deliberately misleading his audience to this conclusion. This type of narrative play would continue in some later work, but ceases to be the major element like it is in the early films. This is one reason why Hong's later work is more accessible, and why it may be best to work backwards in chronology if first coming to his work at this current time.


The Essentials

1. The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000): it is difficult to designate a Hong masterpiece, since the quality of his work is so remarkably consistent, but this is certainly the film that has provoked the most discussion for its puzzle-like structure. It also features striking black and white photography, which Hong would not return to until his latest, The Day He Arrives.

2. Oki's Movie (2010): at a quick 80 minutes, this may be the ideal first film for a Hong neophyte. Consisting of four short films featuring the same recurring actors (and perhaps characters?), it is yet another Hong film set at a film school and involving teachers and students. The final sequence, also titled "Oki's Movie", features the character of Oki recalling two separate dates with two different men, each taking place at the same time of year and location, only years apart. It is the best twenty minutes of Hong's career.

3. Night and Day (2008): my vote for Hong's funniest film, and also one with the greatest surrealist streak. This element has been present ever since The Day a Pig Fell in the Well (which is obliquely referenced here), with its matter of fact dream sequence, but reaches its fullest expression here, with nods back to Bunuel's L'Age d'Or. Not surprisingly, the result is also probably Hong's most erotic work, despite the absence of explicitness.

4. Lost in the Mountains (2009): one of Hong's harder to find films, this 35-minute short was made as part of the 2009 Jeonju Digital Project. It features a couple of important firsts in his career: the first voiceover narration and the first female protagonist. This produces the most progressive work of his career, albeit one that requires a familiarity with his earlier films to really have the ending's emotional and almost cathartic release hit home. Interestingly, the three leads would reunite two years later on Oki's Movie, which also has the format of the short film. In many ways this can be seen as a forerunner of that later masterpiece.

5. Woman is the Future of Man (2004): the most spare and minimalist of all of Hong's films, with just 51 shots in an 87 minute running time. Apparently, the shorter than length was unintentional, as a whole sequence had to be removed because Hong couldn't make the rhythm work in the editing room. Watching the film you wouldn't suspect it, as everything works together quite perfectly (unlike 2011's The Day He Arrives, another shorter film that did feel somewhat incomplete). Hong's obsessions, especially regarding repetitions, really seems to peak here. Maybe his most perfect film, if one that is maybe too slight and alienating to be considered his absolute best.

THE DAY HE ARRIVES (Hong Sang-soo, 2011)

http://www.theoneonefour.com/2011/08/24/in-review-the-day-he-arrives-hong-sang-soo-2011/

OKI'S MOVIE (Hong Sang-soo, 2010)

http://www.theoneonefour.com/2011/01/26/in-review-okis-movie-hong-sang-soo-2010/

IN REVIEW: HAHAHA (Hong Sang-soo, 2010)

http://www.theoneonefour.com/2010/10/23/in-review-hahaha-hong-sang-soo-2010/

THE DAY A PIG FELL IN THE WELL

New review at the oneonefour.com:

http://www.theoneonefour.com/2009/10/29/in-review-the-day-a-pig-fell-in-the-well-hong-sang-soo-1996/

LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL (Hong Sang-soo, 2009)

Over the last week I have seen Hong Sang-soo's new film twice. It is a typical Hong film in many ways, and does not really branch into new territory. But it is still a very entertaining and fascinating work, and provides much to think about in terms of his overall oeuvre.

First, the plot. I won't go into great detail about the story, but it is important to note the dual structure at work. The film begins with an intertitle, "Jecheon Summer 2008", and follows the lead character, Director Ku, and his experience at the local film festival (where he is a judge). This takes the first 52 minutes of the story. There is then a second intertitle, "Jeju Island, 12 Days Later". After his bad experience in Jecheon, Ku goes to Jeju to give a lecture on his films at the university of an old friend. As can be expected with Hong, the second story has parallels with the first, with situations and dialogue deliberately repeating themselves.

As can be guessed by this brief plot outline, this is a very self-reflexive film, even by Hong's standards. Nearly all of Hong's films feature artists, and some even have filmmakers as leads. But the director Ku in this film is the closest example yet of a Hong surrogate. Like Hong, Ku has a certain reputation as a talented director, but he is not commercially successful. During his presentation to the university students, someone asks him why he makes the films he does, suggesting that he is wasting his time since nobody watches or understands them. Ku's defense of his films could used to describe Hong's cinema as well. Ku says that his films have no clear messages and no beautiful images. Instead, he gathers pieces of life together and makes them into one, trying to get the audience to see afresh without fixed ideas. The student responds by stating, "you are not a film director, you're a philosopher". She clearly means it as an insult, and Hong seems willing to concede the point while nevertheless making it clear that he cannot make films any other way.

The connections with Hong's other films are abundant, although there is less of a link with his most recent feature, Night and Day, which I think is Hong's best so far. The immediate comparison for me was Turning Gate because of the focus on a single male protagonist and the split narrative, in which incidents reoccur in the new situation. There is even a reference in the dialogue to that film's most memorable scene. Ku is asked about a bruise on his face, and he replies that he got into a fight after looking at a girl's legs. In Turning Gate, the lead character almost gets into a fight for the same reason. There is also a strong resemblance to Woman on the Beach in terms of its structure, its lead actress (the great Ko Hyun-Jung), and especially its ending (which is likewise on the beach). In many ways, it makes more explicit the critique of idealism that has run through Hong's films. My only small complaint would be that there seemed a lack of progression here, especially compared to Night and Day and even the recent short Lost in the Mountains. For me, it had some of the same quality of my least favorite Hong film, Tale of Cinema, in which he had to take a step back before moving forward. But on the plus side, Like You Know It All is a much more entertaining work.

In terms of style, the editing here is the most spare of all his films except for Woman is the Future of Man (and possibly Night and Day, which I haven't had a chance to time). The ASL is roughly 78 seconds, and is even longer in the second part of the story:

Jecheon section: 52 minutes, 44 shots (ASL: 71 sec)
Jeju section: 71 minutes, 51 shots (ASL: 84 sec)

Long takes dominate, but so does mobile framing. The combination of zooming and camera movement is quite extensive here, and I would wager that it is the highest percentage of mobile framing of all of Hong's films. Here, again, the comparison with the heavy use of the initial zoom in Tale of Cinema seems appropriate. Despite the high ASL, this is a very different film than Woman is the Future of Man, which I have described before as Hong degree zero. In contrast, this is a highly expressive film in terms of camera rhetoric, relatively speaking of course. One wonders if Hong will continue down this road, or offer up another variation. One stylistic decision that did intrigue me is the use of off-screen sound, in particular the sounds of sex, vomiting, and crying. Like in his other recent films, sex is not presented explicitly in visual terms. But it does dominate the sound design, forcing the audience and the characters into an ambiguous position. This is especially true near the conclusion, which contains a use of off-screen sound I'm still pondering.

Watching the film twice in a week, a second viewing was perhaps too close and has caused me to underrate it. But even on first viewing, these minor reservations were present. I did enjoy it a great deal the first time, which may have related to seeing it with a large and appreciative audience. Another way in which this is a self-reflexive work is one that may be lost on most non-Koreans: the many number of famous actors in some supporting or near cameo roles. There is a playful postmodernism at work here that is not usually present in Hong. With this film and Night and Day, he has proven he can entertain a local audience. But unfortunately his reputation is such that it seems unlikely he will ever have any significant box office returns. Thankfully, that is unlikely to deter him from producing more movies.

Hong Sang-soo Retrospective

Starting today and continuing until next Wednesday (June 3rd), Miro Space theatre in Gwanghwamun is showing all of Hong Sang-soo's films, although only a few with English subtitles. The schedule is as follows:

With English subtitles:

The Day a Pig Fell in the Well May 29th 8:30pm, June 2nd 1:30pm
The Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors June 2nd 8:30pm
Woman on the Beach May 31th 1:30pm

Without subtitles:

The Power of Kangwon Province May 30th 1:30pm, June 1st 8:30pm
Turning Gate June 1st 1:30pm, June 3rd 8:30pm
Woman is the Future of Man May 29th 1:30pm
Tale of Cinema May 30th 8:30pm
Night and Day May 31st 8:30pm, June 3rd 1:30pm
Like You Know It All May 29th-June 3rd 11:00am, 6:00pm

Miro Space is located close to exit 7, Gwanghwamun subway station, line 5. The website is here.

New Hong Sang-soo and Park Chan-wook films (with subtitles!)

The new films You Don't Even Know (Hong Sang-soo, 2009) and Thirst (Park Chan-wook, 2009), both of which are playing at the Cannes Film Festival, are apparently being shown with English subtitles at the CGV Yongsan, at least according to their website. Very exciting news, since subtitled Korean films in theatres remain rare, and even more importantly a chance to get an early look at the latest from two great directors. I'm going to try to get to both this week.

Here are the times:

You Don't Even Know Fri, Sun-Wed 11:45am, 5:05pm, 10:30pm; Sat 11:30am, 4:50pm, 10:15pm

Thrist Fri, Sun-Wed 9:00am, 2:20pm, 7:45pm; Sat 8:45am, 2:05pm, 7:30pm, 12:50am

LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS (Hong Sang-soo, 2009)

Hong Sang-soo's 30 minute short Lost in the Mountains is one of the finer pieces in his uniformly strong output. Although Hong apparently made short films as a student, this his first officially released short film (at least that I am aware of). One advantage for Hong in making a short film is that many viewers come in with an awareness of his typical style and subject matter. As a result, he can perform some variations that give the work added meaning for those familiar with his output. WARNING: spoilers ahead.

In plot, this is a very recognizable Hong film: a writer drives from Seoul to Jeonju to visit her friend. She calls her former professor and lover and spends the day with him. She then discovers that her friend is also involved with the professor. Very upset by this revelation, she invites her ex-lover, another former student, to join them. A night of drinking and sexual pairings concludes with the four coincidentally meeting the next day. But despite this superficial resemblance, this short has Hong exploring new material.

First, this is one of the few Hong films in which there is a clear lead character, and the first time that this character is a woman. In this way, it feels more like a follow-up to Woman on the Beach than to his last film, Night and Day. Also, for the first time in his films (at least that I can recall), there is a voice-over narration. This makes it his most psychological, closer in tone to Turning Gate, the only other Hong film with a clear protagonist. This combines to make this the most overtly emotional of his films; in fact, compared to the other films, it has a nearly melodramatic feel. This may be connected to the short form; it is as if all the plot of a typical Hong film has been compressed down into this 30 minutes, and as a result has a higher percentage of emotional peaks. One could speculate that this is why the voice-over is used: it provides a kind of narrative economy, that Hong then integrates into the type of story he wants to tell. There is a self-reflexive moment in which he calls attention to this limitation, in which the lead character says that she wants to write something short. For Hong, this time constraint allows him to deal with very familiar material in a heightened register.

The style of the film is both consistent with his other films, with a number of familiar long take compositions as well as many uses of the zoom lens. But the editing is also quicker than any of his films since The Power of Kangwon Province in 1998. There are 45 shots in a 30 minute film, making the ASL roughly 40 seconds. 1o of these shots occur both at the beginning and the ending, a rhyming 5 shot sequence of quick cuts of the hotel district of Jeonju. But even without these shots, the style is more dynamic than usual, not only in terms of editing, but also in relation to camera movement and zooms. This seems to parallel to overall tone of the piece, which has a greater momentum and urgency than other Hong works.

One could see all this as a negative, as Hong having to compromise his style and subject matter to fit unnaturally into this small box of time. I may agree if not for the film's magnificent ending, certainly the most progressive of Hong's career. The scene consists of the four characters confronting each other, with the two male characters in particular locked in an absurd and hypocritical battle of words. Although the scene is very funny, it is at the same time frustrating. We have to stand by and watch this hypocrisy because proper Korean social manners forbid the characters from pointing out the obvious. And because the emotional level of the film is already so high, it creates a strong desire to say something, almost to yell at the screen. And then, the lead character fulfills our wish, finally calling the characters on their lies and leaving the scene. She gets into her car and exits. The liberation of the moment is unmatched in anything else Hong has done. Hong is typically seen as a rather apolitical filmmaker, but within the personal politics of his films, this is his most overt statement.

WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN at the Film of the Month Club

I volunteered to choose the film for the March Film of the Month club and selected Hong Sang-soo's Woman is the Future of Man (2004). I just posted a brief intro on Hong and will start the month on Sunday with posts on the actual film. Hopefully there will be some interesting discussion on one of Korea's better films of the decade (in my opinion, of course). You can check out the Film of the Month blog here.

A TALE OF CINEMA (Hong Sang-soo, 2005)

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"Hong Sang-su's films feature too many elements of postmodernism to be classified as existentialist; too much rage and sincerity for postmodernist; too much cynicism for romanticist; and, perhaps most importantly, too much passion for nihilism." Kyung Hyun Kim (2004) (p. 228)

Returning to Canada this summer, I was able to track down some scholarship written on Hong Sang-soo, whose films have increasingly fascinated me over the course of the last year. The best work written on Hong thus far is by the scholar Kyung Hyun Kim. This includes a chapter on Hong's first three films in his book The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema as well as an essay on Hong's fourth film, Turning Gate. I look forward to revisiting Hong's earlier films after reading Kim's analysis.

I was also able to finally track down the only Hong film I hadn't yet seen, A Tale of Cinema. It is with this film that Hong returns, but with a slight variation, to the split narratives of his first three films. Hong's two features before A Tale of Cinema avoided the direct repetitons of the earlier films and were increasingly pared down stylistically, especially in the use of editing. This is especially true of Woman is the Future of Man (2004), with an ASL of 98 seconds, by far the most sparsely edited film Hong has made. A Tale of Cinema is a very different film, returning to an ASL (63 seconds) closer to Turning Gate (58 seconds) and also adding the use of a zoom lens that functions, as Michael Sicinski has noted, very much like conventional editing. Of course, there is a big difference, since the whole point of conventional continuity, in addition to providing shot variety and audience manipulation, is to be invisible. Hong's zooms are nothing if not noticeable.

Hong was asked about his use of the zoom by Huh Moonyung:

HUH: The distinct use of zoom-in and zoom-out would have surprised the audience who are familiar with your movies. What principle did you apply in using the zoom?
HONG: Emphasis, intimacy, making of a rhythm within a shot, a sense of alienation, compression, economical way to handle a scene, etc... (p. 76)

The contradictory nature of this response (intimacy and alienation) indicates a lack of consistent use of the technique. Nevertheless, the amateurish way in which it is used seems to coincide with the first half of the film and its film-within-a film status. We learn that the first 40 minutes was a student film and was being watched by the director's former classmate. This immediately explains the awkwardness of both the form as well as the acting. But once "Hong's" film begins the zoom does not disappear. Indeed, it will not disappear in his next two films either. Nevertheless, the rest of the film still feels more like a Hong film than the opening. The takes are longer and the use of the zoom less frequent and more controlled. Take the two sequences from the first half that are repeated. The first meeting between Sang-won and Yeong-sil (Figures 1-2) is restaged with Dong-su and Yeongsil, only this time there is no zoom (Figure 8). The shot of Sang-won and Yeong-sil having a drink (which starts as a typical Hong composition) is less than two minutes and features 4 zooms (Figures 3-7), but the repetition of the scene between Dong-su and Yeongsil is over twice as long and features only 2 zooms (Figures 9-11). The penultimate scene, although highly melodramatic, is filmed without a zoom (Figure 12). In his next two films, Hong's use of the zoom will follow the pattern of A Tale of Cinema's second half.

In addition to the zoom, there is a use of voiceover through the student film section. This is dropped once the second half of the narrative begins, but Hong brings it back at the conclusion. It is tempting to read all of this as Hong wanting to return to his own student filmmaking roots in order to rediscover filmmaking, especially since the film's title is usually translated in French (Conte de Cinema). Like the New Wave directors, Hong sees the need to rediscover the cinema after becoming more and more simple in his technique. This seems like a necessary step, even if A Tale of Cinema may be Hong's least successful film. Part of what marks the greatness of Hong is the quote above from Kim on the difficulty of labelling his work. In this regard, A Tale of Cinema is too obviously "postmodern", unlike Hong's other films. But at the same time Hong needed a new start, having pushed his style as far as it could go. I disagree with Michael Sicinsky that A Tale of Cinema is Hong's best film (although Hong's oeuvre, as I've argued in previous posts, is very difficult to rank); it is actually my least favorite. But without this experiment, perhaps Woman on the Beach and his most recent Night and Day (which may be his best film) would not have been possible.

For a plot synopsis as well as a very intelligent discussion of the film, check out Michael Sicinski's CinemaScope review here.

Kyung Hyun Kim, "Too Early/ Too Late: Temporality and Repetition in Hong Sang-su's films," in The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004): 203-230.

Kyung Hyun Kim, "The Awkward Traveller in Turning Gate," in New Korean Cinema (ed. Chi-Yun Shin and Julian Stringer) (New York: NYU Press, 2005): 170-179.

Huh Moonyung, Hong Sang-soo (Seoul: Korean Film Archive, 2007)

TURNING GATE (Hong Sang-soo, 2002)

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After much effort, I tracked down one of the two Hong Sang-soo films I haven't seen, Turning Gate (thanks to Roujin from the filmspotting message board). Like all of Hong's films, I find it difficult to evaluate. Having seen seven of his eight features, it would be almost impossible for me to order them in terms of preference. Seeing Turning Gate in isolation would almost certainly detract from its effectiveness. At the same time, seeing it after looking at three of his previous and three of his subsequent works, it cannot help but be thought of as a transitional text. As such, it was less satisfying than his other films, although at the time it was released and even since then I have read reviews claiming it as Hong's masterpiece.

In terms of narrative, Hong avoids repeating scenes as he did in his first three films, most notably in the almost experimental structure of Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors. The narrative does split here, but the lead male character, Gyeong-su (an actor), simply moves from one woman to another. With Hong, as usual, there are still parallels drawn, most explicitly with the two goodbye notes each woman writes. Even the ending is based on a story told early in the film, and a truly odd scene of Gyeong-su lighting a man's cigarette is eventually given significance later in the film (although we may not remember it). But generally, the two stories here do not seem as obviously connected as in his other stories made both before and after Turning Gate. More than in his other work, the main male character is focused on to a great extent, and it may be Hong's most psychologically driven narrative. Unfortunately, that psychology turns out, eventually, to be rather limited and simplistically focused around ideas of purity. Hong's ending certainly critiques this, but does not seem to be able to go beyond it as he will in later works.

Stylistically, there are a few sequences in the first half that seem more expressionistic than Hong ordinarily presents. There is a scene filtered in red as Gyeong-su and his friend meet with two prostitutes (Figure 1), and a dance performed by Myeong-suk with an elaborate use of mirrors (Figure 2). But as the film progresses, the shots become more simple (Figures 3 and 4). Hong's editing rate is close to his previous film, but the pared down nature of the shots over the second half seem to point to his next film, Woman is the Future of Man, in which Hong will reduce his editing and shot set-ups even further.

Hong's handling of sexuality also pivots with this film. Hong's first three films were sexually frank, and all of his films deal with this topic, but Turning Gate is his most sexually explicit. In fact, the scenes are so graphic that an audience may question if they are simulated or not. However, by the end of the film, Gyeong-su cannot get an erection. He states that he is tired of sex and wishes he can "live clean like this and die". From this point on in his work, Hong will eventually reduce the explicitness of his depictions. I would link this to Hong's decreased interest in the whole notion of idealized conceptions of sexuality.

Seon-yeong, the second woman in the story, eventually leaves Gyeong-su at the conclusion. As the intertitle informs us, this reminds Gyeong-su of a story he told earlier of a snake falling in love with a princess but then being left by her at a gate. The final shot shows Gyeong-su come to the gate, and then turn and leave the frame (Figures 5 and 6). The shot remains empty and the film ends (Figure 7). This is both a downbeat, contemplative ending as well as a wry and satirical one. The viewer at once observes the connection with the previous stories (both of the turning gate and the fortune teller Gyeong-su and Seon-yeong have just visited) but nevertheless questions them as yet another romantic myth of the protagonist. Gyeong-su is not a snake and is not destined for a grim future. Seon-yeong is not a princess and destined for greatness. Rather, they are both acting out and performing roles and self-fulfilling prophesies.

But this is coming from a rationalist point of view. The narrative can be taken straight, and Hong includes a number of coincidences that give the film, like all of his work, a certain irrational, dream-like power. The last shot is emblematic. It is a rather simple shot of the rain falling on a gate. But it is also iconic, and has connotations beyond a simple description of its content. As with all of Hong, there is a materialist, rationalist discourse competing with a kind of illogical primitivism. As much as the film is a turning point, Turning Gate still acts as another chapter in the single work Hong seems to be making.

Summer Vacation at the Cinematheque

The Cinematheque has announced its "summer vacation" program, running from July 11-August 17. It includes:

-a Sergio Leone retrospective, with the Dollars trilogy, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Once Upon a Time in America (full version).

-a Hal Hartley retrospective

-a screening of one of my favorite films, The Third Man, as well as Rififi, Walkabout, Woman on the Dunes, and others

-plus, this Saturday, a three film marathon of Hong Sang-soo films: Woman on the Beach, Night and Day, and A Tale of Cinema. Apparently Hong will be in attendance for the screening of Night and Day. No word on subtitles, but hopefully.

I will miss most of the program because I will be away, but I should get a chance to see Once Upon a Time in the West and the Hong Sang-soo films before I leave.

WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN (Hong Sangsoo, 2004)

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Woman is the Future of Man is the fifth feature of Hong Sang-soo, and offers similarities with his previous work while also looking forward to his next films, although I have yet to see either the film that precedes it, Turning Gate (2002), or the film that follows, A Tale of Cinema (2005). It is Hong's shortest film at 87 minutes, and also the one with the longest average shot length (99 seconds). There are only 51 shots, well over half of which last more than one minute (see shot breakdown here). The narrative form, while not containing the experimentation of The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000), is nevertheless more difficult than his last two films and more in keeping with Hong's earlier obsessions.

The narrative begins with two men, Mun-ho, a painter and university instructor, and Heon-jun, a film director. After meeting outside Mun-ho's large house (he is married but we never meet his wife), the two men go to a restaurant to eat and drink. What follows is the longest shot of the film, over six minutes, most of which is a static two-shot (Figure 1). However, after the men argue (about a woman, of course), Mun-ho exits. Heon-jun asks the waitress to be in his film, she refuses, the camera pans over to her at the cash register, and then back to Heon-ju, who gazes out the window and makes eye contact with a woman (Figure 2), after which the shot finally cuts. We do not realize it yet, but this actually begins a flashback from Heon-jun's perspective about his relationship with Seon-hwa. Eventually, the film returns to the two-shot back at the restaurant (Figure 3). What follows is another very long take, the second longest of the film (over five minutes long) in which the earlier shot is repeated. This time, Heon-jun leaves, Mun-ho asks the waitress to pose nude for him, the camera pans away and then back, and Mun-ho makes eye contact with the same woman (I believe) (Figure 4) before Hong cuts. We then begin Mun-ho's flashback and his relationship with the same woman, Seon-hwa.

After these two flashbacks, the two men go to meet Seon-hwa again, and end up waiting for her at a bar (Figure 5). This shot is another two-shot, but now even the background of the earlier, simple shots is gone and we get only a wall. This is the nadir of the characters and their limited outlooks, and after Seon-hwa arrives shortly afterwards the compositions over the second half of the film become more crowded and complex (Figures 6 and 7). This mirrors the deepening of the characters' world. After another night with Seon-hwa in which both men sleep with her again (in the same order as before), we leave this trio and join Mun-ho and his students. Mun-ho takes a female student to a hotel for sex (a love hotel, as they are known in Korea) but they are discovered by a jealous male student. The final shot has Mun-ho and the girl discussing the possibility of being found out by the school. Here we have another two shot, but in the open air of the city (Figure 8). Eventually she leaves and the film ends with Mun-ho alone but yet framed against the vast vanishing point of the city lights (Figure 9). The ending denotes isolation, but also a denial of the type of selfishness Mun-ho has exhibited. The characters may deny the social world in their artistic solipsism, but the ending suggests that Hong wants to go beyond this.

A final note: one of my favorite filmmakers is Abbas Kiarostami, and one of the aspects of his work I most admire is the degree of self-criticism on display (an especially great example is The Wind Will Carry Us). I see a similar quality in Hong, and one that is becoming more and more present through his artist surrogate characters. His new film, Night and Day, moves further along in this direction.

WOMAN ON THE BEACH (Hong Sangsoo, 2006)

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My exploration of the work of Hong Sang-soo continued yesterday when I was able to track down a DVD copy of Woman on the Beach, his most recent film prior to the just released Night and Day (2008). Having watched Hong's first three films in order, I am now, purely by (Hongian) coincidence, proceeding backwards in time from Night and Day. From an evaluative standpoint, I felt Woman on the Beach to be my least favorite Hong film. It has the plainest structure and is the least dream-like of all of his work, and the second half especially lacked the complexity of his other films. But it still intrigued me for a number of reasons, especially in connection with Hong's other work. Coming to Woman on the Beach without knowing Hong's oeuvre would, I believe, deeply reduce its meaning and enjoyment, although it could also cause one to unfairly underrate it (as perhaps I've done). Rather than offer a review of the film, what I want to offer here are a few ideas around both Woman on the Beach and the reading of Hong in general.


The Mysteries of the Hongian Zoom

Michael Kerpan, one of the best critics of Asian cinema, commented to my previous entry on Night and Day that he is still "pondering the mysteries of the Hong-ian zoom." Hong first introduces the zoom, apparently very obtrusively, in his previous Tale of Cinema (see review discussing the zoom in that film here). I first encountered it with Night and Day, and it is on display again in Woman on the Beach. Its use is still, on the whole, rather difficult to decipher. But there is one scene where Hong uses the zoom in a clearly expressive manner.

It is one of the longest takes in the very slowly edited film (ASL over 70 seconds; shot breakdown here), lasting over four minutes. It contains three zooms. After starting with a two shot of two characters, Jung-rae (a film director) and Moon-sook (the woman he and his junior colleague Chang-uk are competing over) (Figure 1), Hong zooms out to reveal Chang-uk and create a three shot (Figure 2). This is the zoom as formal play, as Hong had ended the previous scene by making the audience believe Jung-rae and Moon-sook were going to liaison away from the other man. As the scene progresses, Moon-sook reveals that while living in Germany she had serious (meaning sexual) relationships with two or three foreigners. At this point, Jung-rae begins a tirade against "unattractive" Korean women who leave the country and become desirable in foreign cultures where Asian women are eroticized. At the beginning of his speech Hong zooms back in (Figure 3), commenting on his closed-mindedness and the anxiety her admission has provoked. Tellingly, he states that he is not bothered about the myth of Western men having larger penises, unconsciously revealing, of course, that this is exactly why he is upset, and not the absurd reason he mentions. Eventually, she responds by saying that he is a typical Korean man. At this point, Hong zooms back out (Figure 4). Jung-rae leaves and the shot finally cuts. This scene is not only the most compelling of the film, but it is also a great microcosm, in its dialogue and zooms, for the entire movement of the work.

Hong and Psychoanalysis

"If an object is to take its place in a libidinal space, its arbitrary character must remain concealed. The subject cannot say to herself, 'Since the object is arbitrary, I can choose whatever I want as the object of my drive.' The object must appear to be found, to offer itself as support and point of reference for the drive's circular movement. . . (This was) the fundamental lesson of Lacan: while it is true that any object can occupy the empty place of the Thing, it can do so only by means of the illusion that it was always already there, i.e., that it was not placed there by us but found there as an 'answer of the real.' Although any object can function as the object-cause of desire -- insofar as the power of fascination it exerts is not its immediate property but results from the place it occupies in the structure -- we must, by structural necessity, fall prey to the illusion that the power of fascination belongs to the object as such." (32-33)

The above quote is from Slavoj Zizek, from his book Looking Awry, which I recently re-read. The passage came to my mind while watching Woman on the Beach and reflecting on Hong's work in general. While it was serendipity that led to this connection, I think the link between Hong and psychoanalysis is more than simply in my mind. Hong holds a fascination for formalist critics such as David Bordwell, but his films are equally compelling for a psychoanalytical reading.

As typical of Hong, Woman on the Beach features a scene that is a repetition of an earlier sequence. Figure 5 is a centered two-shot of Jung-rae and Moon-sook during their first moments alone together. It is the most self-consciously beautiful in the film, and its striking cinematography makes its replay later in the film all the more noticeable (Figure 6). This time, Jung-rae is with a different woman, Seon-hee, who he met earlier in the day. Although the scene replays itself, there is a difference beyond simply the woman herself. The framing is no longer centered and balanced, and it is also slightly to the right of the earlier alignment. I would propose that the reason for this can be explained by the above quotation. Whereas the meeting with Moon-sook happened by chance, the courtship of the later woman was deliberately planned. He meets her by asking to interview her for a film because she looks like Moon-sook. In other words, he tries to replace her in his libidinal structure, which he eventually does. But when Moon-sook returns the next day, he chooses to return to her. However arbitrary she may be, Moon-sook was found as opposed to placed. This allows her to maintain a sense of illusion and fascination. Through his slightly mis-placed mise-en-scene, Hong subtly conveys this concept.

The Value and Limitation of Formalism

One of the most memorable images from Woman on the Beach occurs when the director tries to illustrate his problem with women and the possibility of overcoming it. He draws a diagram (Figure 7) in which he illustrates reality as a amorphous blob. Within this, various events take place, which are represented as points. The problem is that we form an idea or shape that obsesses us. The small triangle in the figure represents Moon-sook's relationship with a foreigner, which is pre-occupying him. He argues that he can perhaps overcome this by focusing on all the aspects of her, forming a different shape that comes closer to represent her whole reality. Not surprisingly, David Bordwell discusses this scene at the conclusion of essay on Hong (it also provides the inspiration for the title of his piece):

"A little parable about ellipsis, the diagram illustrates the out-of-synch patterning of films like The Power of Kangwon Province and Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors. It also evokes the ways in which Hong's men, obsessed with an image of woman, make the same mistakes over and over. Interestingly, Moon-sook, the woman who is pursuing Jung-rae, finds the diagram clever but evasive. After denouncing Korean men, at the climax she will assert: 'I don't repeat things.'
It might be our director's new motto. After venturing very far into a hall of mirrors, Hong returns to everyday life and the minutiae of behavior. Having shown that a person's every word or gesture can harbor obscure correspondences, he is content to let us find them on our own. He no longer has to repeat things." (29)

While Bordwell's interpretation here is certainly debatable (I find it far more schematic in terms of positive versus negative characters than what Hong actually presents), it is valid and even compelling in reading Hong's recent films in relation to his earlier work. What I problematic is the way Bordwell seems to be willfully ignorant of the more troubling aspects of the scene. The fact that the triangle represents a relationship with a foreigner, which is then crossed out, is not even described by Bordwell, let alone analyzed. Yet it is key to the scene and how we interpret its meaning. How do we read the crossed out triangle? Is it a call for acceptance of people? Or an evasion of aspects of people we cannot accept and thus need to be eliminated? It is here that we need to move beyond formalism. And although I do not have the time or probably the ability to apply a thorough psychoanalytical reading here, it seems to be inviting one with its blotch of the Real, its "pieces", and even its coffin-shape (death drive, anyone?).

A final note: Hong's discussion of sexual anxiety and Western foreigners is the first I've come across in Korean films, which is admittedly a small sample. I'd be curious how far reaching this exclusion is. Also, this looks forward to Hong's next film, Night and Day, which takes place mostly in France but features an almost exclusively Korean cast, reflecting the continued isolation of Korean characters within another country. I'm interested to see if Hong continues to incorporate more notions of "otherness" is his next films. It seems a fruitful avenue to explore to move away from the notions of purity and idealism that haunt all his films with the exception of Night and Day.

Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture (Cambridge, Mass: October Books, 1991)

David Bordwell, "Beyond Asian Minimalism: Hong Sangsoo's Geometry Lesson," in Huh Moonyung, Hong Sangsoo (Seoul: Korean Film Council, 2007): 19-29.

Jeonju Film Festival III: Hong Sangsoo

The only new film I saw at the festival was Night and Day (Hong Sangsoo, 2008), which debuted at Berlin in February. It has been in theatres here since then, but without English subtitles, so this was my first chance to see it. I have recently viewed Hong's first three films, but have not yet tracked down the four films he directed after: Turning Gate (2002), Woman is the Future of Man (2004), Tale of Cinema (2005), and Woman on the Beach (2006). Thus my comments below should be read with this caveat in mind.

The story begins with a title card explaining that the lead character, Sung-nam, a painter, has had to flee Korea for fear of being arrested for smoking marijuana (a serious crime in this country). Similar to Hong's other films, the narrative centers on his relationship with women. Unlike the earlier films, in which the narrative is retold, here the story involves multiple female characters that act as variations on one another (according to David Bordwell, Hong has been using this approach since Turning Gate, with the exception of Tale of Cinema). The structure is broken down by dates which are given in title cards, giving the film a diarist feel. However, the film's conclusion includes a striking dream sequence that makes one re-examine the entire story's reality (although not necessarily; this is not a twist ending).

Although there were surrealistic elements in Hong's first three films, Night and Day is the most Bunuelesque of his works, even including an homage to L'Age d'Or (1930). This is also Hong's most accessible movie and is the closest he has come to a pure comedy. It is recognizably a Hong picture, but with a very different feel. Of course, part of this feeling of my part may be the different viewing experience I had. Seeing Night and Day in a full theatre with a Korean audience who were responding favourably to Hong's absurdity was at radical odds with watching the first three films alone on video. Nevertheless, I think my comments about this film's more audience friendly nature are accurate. Upon leaving the theatre, quite a few audience members commented, "Wow, it wasn't boring!"

Thematically, Hong has seemingly left behind the earlier obsession with idealism and purity. The sexual obsessions of the characters are still present, but the presentation is more detached and distanced, more comedy than tragedy. Instead, the examination of the artist has become even more pronounced than the earlier work, or at least allowed to take more importance in the viewer's mind with the de-emphasis on sexuality. The idea of authenticity and responsibility in art haunts the film, although Hong is typically allusive in terms of the meaning of this in relation to the overall work. As usual, Hong is not constructing an argument with a clear meaning.

Stylistically, this is Hong's first film in HD digital, although it is blown up to 35mm. Since Hong has typically placed more importance on camera position, shot length, and mise-en-scene than beautiful images and cinematography, the move to digital makes a certain amount of sense and I did not feel it was a detriment. Hong includes a new stylistic technique by periodically zooming the image, a device not used in the earlier work I have seen. I would have to watch the film again to even attempt to offer an analysis of how this is used, but my initial suspicion is that Hong is not employing the zoom systematically to create meaning. Towards the end of the film, I had a thought that Hong was zooming into the lead character to offer a comment on his lack of awareness. While this may be true of individual uses, it would not be keeping with Hong's general tendencies to apply this interpretation to all uses of the zoom.

Overall, like most great directors, Hong shows the ability to maintain his auteurist distinction while avoiding a simple repetition of his early work. Although it is early, I would be (pleasantly) surprised if this film is not in my Top 5 of 2008.

THE VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS (Hong Sang-soo, 2000)

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NOTE: This post is longer than usual and also contains numerous spoilers.

Hong Sang-soo's third feature offers a culmination of his previous films and their thematic, narrative and stylistic concerns. The focus on male-female sexual relationships is pared down even further, as this is essentially the story of the consummation of a love affair between the virgin Soo-Jeong and her lover Jae-Hun. Narratively, it is the most extreme of Hong's formal experiments, presenting the story of this affair in two parallel sections, with many scenes being repeated with slight variations. Likewise, the long take style of the first two films is taken to a much greater extreme. The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well had an average shot length (ASL) of 24 seconds; The Power of Kangwon Province had an ASL of 33 seconds; here, the ASL is over 52 seconds. This is mostly due to an large increase in extremely long takes of 100 seconds or more: each of Hong's first films contained 9 such shots, while The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors has 22 of these prolonged takes. Furthermore, these takes tend to be of far less dramatic importance than in the earlier films, where they usually took place between lovers or at tense table conversations. In this film, Hong's minimal editing tends to serve his narrative experiment, as does the decision to shoot in black and white. The sparseness of editing and color allows Hong to position the viewer to concentrate on the variations he develops throughout the film's second half.

The narrative structure is alluded to in the film's international title (the Korean title is simply Oh! Soo-Jeong) and its reference to Marcel Duchamp's glass artwork "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" (1915-1923). Both pieces of art are divided into two, and this division is along gender lines. Both can certainly be interpreted as explorations of sexual desire, but the abstraction of both can also lead against interpretation and criticism all together. Watching Hong's films, there is a certain meaninglessness that comes across that especially separates him from fellow Korean director Lee Chang-Dong. This difference in sensibility is ultimately why I believe I prefer Lee's films to Hong's. The critic Huh Moonyung has written of Hong:

"His attitude of denial is radical. Even the most basic preconditions, like axioms in mathemathics, such as 'meaning is more valuable than meaninglessness,' 'all human beings are entitled to dignity' and 'life is superior to death,' are all denied in Hong's films. Hong is not a critic. In order to criticize, one must possess a value system as criteria for criticism, which Hong Sangsoo lacks." (Huh, 13)

In contrast, consider Lee Chang-Dong's remarks about cinema generally and how he approaches it:

"In the 90s, being serious kills the party because you make a fool of yourself by talking about things people already know but choose not to talk about. In the 80s, there was some merit in telling the truth. But by the 90s, truth was not appreciated. Here I am, still taking things seriously and trying to tell the truth. How irritating!" (Kim, 63)

"We're now in the age of post-meaning. Whether we like it or not, movies have become the dominant medium. Other mediums which deal with meaning have weakened, degenerated and lost their power over people. Maybe because I'm coming from the literary world, or I grew up that way, i tend to implant meaning into film. I suppose I'm trying to create as much meaning as possible and communicate with the audience through my films." (Kim, 75)

As a result, Hong's films tend to both invite analysis because of their complexity (by contrast, Lee's films seem deceptively simple) while discouraging interpretation into the film's ultimate meaning (Lee's narratives, on the other hand, tend to be packed with meaning and meant to be interpreted). That Hong is a favorite of formalist scholar David Bordwell should come as no surprise.

The narrative form of The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors can be plotted as follows:

"Day's Wait" (Jae-hun waits for Soo-jeong in hotel and talks to her on the phone, urging her to come)
"Perhaps Accident"
-7 numbered sections
black screen
"Suspended Cable Car" (repeat of first scene but showing Soo-jeong) (Soo-jeong is suspended on a cable car overlooking Seoul)
"Perhaps Intended"
-7 numbered sections
"Naught Shall Go Ill When You Find Your Mare" (epilogue: cable car begins to move; Soo-Jeong arrives at hotel and they make love; they wash the bloody sheet; the final shot (figure 1) has them in each other's arms as Jae-hun says, "I'll try to fix every fault I have for my life.")

It is tempting to view the two sections as almost-Rashomon like, in which we first get the male and then the female perspective on a relationship. However, this art cinema reading simplifies the film far too much. There are some examples when shots and scenes are repeated almost exactly (figure 2 and 3, taken from a party sequence that reappears in the second half), and others that are close resemblances taken from opposite angles (figures 4 and 5) (It should be noted that Hong apparently filmed in sequence, returning to original locations weeks later). However, just as often the variations are such that they are not simple perspective shifts. Bordwell thus argues that:

"(The film) doesn't supply any subjective motivation for the disparities. It isn't that Jae-hun remembers a moment in their affair in one way, while Soo-jeong remembers it differently. Indeed, we have no reason to believe that the flashbacks represent the characters' memories at all. The scenes are presented in crisply numbered sections, as if they were items in an objective outline, or scenes in parallel worlds. Framed by the present-time scenes, the variants carry out Hong's concern with a pattern that can't be reduced to a dramatic structure." (Huh, 26-27) (from Bordwell's essay "Beyond Asian Minimalism: Hong Sangsoo's Geometry Lesson" )

I find one variation particularly intriguing. In the first section, Jae-hun lures Soo-jeong into an alley by saying he has something funny to tell her, explaining that there is an old man who lives with a girl in the building. When they get into the alley, he says the old man anf the girl are not there and attempts to accost Soo-jeong (Figure 6). In the second half, the older film director, Yeong-soo, is walking with Soo-Jeong and passes an alley. He says to her that he has something funny to show her. The scene then cuts to them lying down in a room with Yeong-soo threatening to rape Soo-jeong (Figure 7). Is this Hong playing with a line of dialogue and location and then showing how the scene could play out differently in an opposite narrative universe? Or, are we to think back to the earlier line of dialogue from Jae-hun and believe that, however coincidental or fantastic, that both scenes may have occurred? As Hong has stated, "I welcome strange coincidences and think they are like a wedge driven into the frame of a banal and conventional mind." (Huh, 57)

The film's ending crystallizes the fascination and disturbance of Hong's work. There is something both optimistic and ridiculous about the couple's union, symbolized by the bloody sheet that they wash and that Jae-hun wants to take home with him. Hong's cinema has a certain obsession with purity that he acknowledges:

"I think I went through puberty clinging onto the ideals such as absolute truth, perfect world, absolute purity, etc. Everything I had encountered in life was automatically compared against an ideal value. I failed to comprehend things in life that couldn't be incorporated into that ideal system. So, my life became fraught with schizophrenia asking why reality cannot easily converge with these beautiful ideals. Only when I reached my 20s did I fortunately begin to see the falsehood behind those ideals and began to better appreciate life, that is, as it is. Characters in my movies reflect such experiences. Specific characters chase after cliched ideals, or even get chased by them, but I want my gaze of characters to be composed from visions that are free from these cliches. To those characters, the conflict between ideals and life that veer away from these ideals is very painful. I want to say that all these pains are actually unnecessary. It's the ideals that are the essence of the problem, not life itself." (Huh, 51-52)

However, it is difficult to view the ending here as simply critical or ironic (as it would almost certainly be clear in the hands of Lee). The final title card "Naught Shall Go Ill When You Find Your Mare" and the final line "I'll try to fix every fault I have for my life" would seem to be examples of idealized thinking, but given this sequence's stable place within a difficult and unsettling narrative, it can also be considered Hong's "most optimistic film". (Huh, 14)

Huh Moonyung, Hong Sangsoo (Seoul: Korean Film Council, 2007)

Kim Young-jin, Lee Chang-Dong (Seoul: Korean Film Council, 2007)