With his own particular kind of unhurried ceaselessness and murmuring calm, Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo has produced another of his elegant, discursive, low-key movies of the educated middle classes. These are movies so numerous and so obviously comparable to each other that they collectively constitute a kind of Balzacian Comédie Humaine, though on a more intimate scale. It will surprise none of Hong’s admirers to discover that this film once again shows us a series of conversations with familiar repertory players, informal one-on-one chats shot casually in available light, with people doing a vast amount of daytime drinking. Really, does any film-maker show characters getting quietly plastered as often and realistically as Hong?
It’s possible to feel simultaneously amused, bemused, intrigued and exasperated at Hong’s film-making, to wonder if the drinking and the consequent inevitable cathartic outburst are in fact cathartic or dramatically meaningful, to wonder what it is leading to. But arguably the enigma is the point. This movie lodged in my mind a little more than Hong’s earlier films, perhaps because it is less contrived and it features a genuinely funny and complex opening scene.
