Shortly before settling into "The Novelist's Film," a tense, absorbing and finally enchanting new movie written and directed by Hong Sang-soo, I couldn't help but cycle through a flurry of familiar questions: Will this one be in color or black-and-white? Will the protagonist be a writer, a painter, a filmmaker or an actor? Will the story (or stories) unfold in strictly linear fashion, abruptly hit the reset button halfway through or play other gently mind-bending games with time? And most importantly, what will everyone drink: soju, as usual, or something a bit less conducive to Hong's brand of reckless, well-liquored truth telling?
To answer those questions in no particular order: They stick to coffee until late in the game, when they consume bottle after bottle of sweet, milky makgeolli. The story flows in chronological order, which doesn't make it any less strange or mysterious, in its way, than it would've been with a few of the director's signature temporal twists. The movie was shot in sharp, high-contrast black-and-white, in the stationary long takes and medium group shots best suited to the characters' long, leisurely conversations. (Hong, as usual, served as his own cinematographer, editor and composer.) And the protagonist, per the title, is a novelist, albeit one with a severe enough case of writer's block to consider trying something new.
Trying something new, of course, is something that Hong's detractors likely wish he would do more often — or perhaps not so often, given his unceasing productivity and unflappable consistency. ("The Novelist's Film," which won second prize at this year's Berlin International Film Festival, is the director's 27th feature and his third picture to be released in U.S. theaters this year, after "Introduction" and "In Front of Your Face.") But those who love and admire Hong's work know that the pleasure of it lies precisely in that consistency. With the subtlest of variations and the most quotidian of details, he and his actors unlock piercing insights and rivers of feeling.
