This has happened before with a previous Hong Sang-soo movie where I just took the events at face value, and only later browsing other people’s reviews saw the different ways they were reading into it. Because what the film, Yourself And Yours (2016), covers is often so ordinary and everyday – people meeting at bars, drinking, or talking in cafes or apartments – it can be deceptive the ways director-writer Sang-soo can invests them with existential mystery.
A couple – Yeong-soo (Kim Joo-hyuk) and Min-jeong (Lee Yoo-young) – have an argument and separate. The reason for the argument is that Yeong-soo has listened to his friends, saying that they’ve seen Min-jeong drinking in bars and getting into altercations. Within the relationship, there was a promise made that Min-jeong would limit her drinking. When it is held against her, Min-jeong argues with Yeong-soo’s belief in his friend’s hearsay and not any trust for her.
In another scene, we see who we think is Min-jeoing sitting in a cafe drinking coffee and another older man, Jae-young (Kwon Hae-hyo), recognises her as “Min-jeoing.” She denies this, saying that she does not know him and explaining that she is a twin. This is what I took at face value. Oh, there are two characters played by the same actor, Lee Yoo-young! But Sang-soo has always had an interest in repetition and mirroring characters and scenes, calling attention to performance and temporal confusion. Even within my trust in what Lee You-young’s character said, the film continues to blur and mess around our understanding, extending it to Yeong-soo being regretful and sad, trying to find Min-jeoing, and often having day-dreams where she returns to him. A scene will play out, and it snaps to Yeong-soo waking up, miserable that his love is absent.
Throughout the narrative, we see the men act a bit clueless and pathetic. Sometimes when they see Lee Yoo-young and believe that she’s someone they’ve met before, it’s hard not to read, wait, is this a pick-up line they’re trying on her? It’s open to interpretation, are there several characters or the one woman playing continuous games in a world that offers her either “wolves or children” in the men she meets. The result is a drolly funny and intriguingly strange film through how the characters and relationships can be interpreted. A conundrum hanging in the air as people sit, drink and eat, break up and make up: do we really know who we’re talking to? Oh well, another beer, please.
Available to stream on SBS On Demand. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 