The Day He Arrives (2011)

In Hong Sang-soo’s The Day He Arrives (2011), a young film director Seong-Jun (Yoo Jun-sang) walks down the street of Seoul, wearing a puffy coat and a travelling backpack, intending to stay with a friend, a film critic, Young-ho (Kim Sang-joon). The director has made four movies but is in an on-going hiatus, living further out in the countryside teaching film studies. He looks young, but when he starts drinking with uni students who recognise him (though not all have seen his films), he doesn’t look so young. And yet, early in the film’s structure, Seong-Jun becomes highly emotional after one night of drinking; he gets angry with the students and runs away, and then winds up crying in an ex-girlfriend’s (Kim Bo-kyung) bedroom floor who hasn’t seen him in two years. Later, when Seong-jun sits in a bar and provides thoughts about coincidence and is praised for being “thoughtful,” it’s hard to not think back on what’s underneath his composure. Contrasts and coincidences become discussed, and emerge as themes for The Day He Arrives.

Understanding it’s a Hong Sang-soo movie, I knew I was in for extended scenes of characters drinking and talking in bars, here shot in black-and-white cinematography. Yet as the days pass, and Seong-Jun’s visit wears on, repetitions become a playful element. He bumps into the same acting student in the street each day. He and his film critic friend, and another woman Bo-ram (Song Seon-mi), go for a drink in a bar called “Novel.” And the bar owner is a young woman who arrives late to her own business, Ye-jeon (also played by Bo-kyung); Young-ho is such a regular that he lets himself in and sets up the drinks. As Seong-Jun’s ex-girlfriend sends phone messages that he reads but he never responds to, he becomes attracted to the bar owner, mainly because she reminds him of his ex.

The character of Seong-Jun is a bit of a joke, a self-involved guy in his 30s who seems to keep making the same mistakes without self-awareness, and something the film observes with wry amusement. With the black and white imagery, and the snowy and chilly climate of Seoul, as characters shiver outside and long to be in a bar drinking for warmth, there is something comforting about this extended hang-out. Something I simply took with linearity as each day mirrors the last, and reading other responses after the movie, there’s also a bit of a game Sang-soo is playing here. Is this the next day, or a different outcome? As characters refer to things that happened previously without recognition, or conversations are repeated without reference to the past, I felt as a viewer a bit addled, like I myself was feeling the effects of a nightly drinking session. Or is it more about an existential ennui, arriving again and again, and yet slightly out of step with your surroundings. I really enjoyed The Day He Arrives, and found it very satisfying upon viewing and reflection, and especially when I understood what the last scene was going to be, and a sense of sadness that I also found to be hilarious. Available to stream on SBS On Demand. Recommended.

Breaking News (2004)

Director Johnnie To and his Milky Way production company set themselves a challenge with Breaking News (2004): How to restage the street shoot-out from Heat but introduce it with an unbroken seven minute shot? Opening with a showdown conveyed in that one-shot take between a heist crew (led by Richie Jen) and a squad of investigators (led by Nick Cheung), the movie spills over into its main topic (as clued in by the title). When news footage of the shoot-out embarrasses Hong Kong police, an officer (Kelly Chin) is placed in charge of their media response. A tenement apartment building becomes the hide-out of the gang, and the site of “The Show” being broadcast with coordination by the police, a uniformed squadron swarming outside. While the team of investigators ignore media-friendly orders and remain inside to hunt the crooks, the shootouts give way to volleys between the two sides playing out over camera crews, phone cameras and internet connections.

Breaking News is efficient and compelling with its interweaving of the action thriller and media satire elements, communicated with a sense of style in the cinematography and the music (pseudo Massive Attack style pulsations). What really makes it a Johnnie To film, aside from the appearance of the irascible Lam Seut in a supporting role, is the sense of humour and heart that occurs throughout the tension. A cop with a weak stomach introduces a few fart gags at choice moments. And a lunch break with the criminals eating with their hostages is a wonderful sequence. As a result, Richie Jen steals the movie as the charismatic and clever head thief.

Available to stream on SBS On Demand. Recommended.

Claire’s Camera (2017)

I think it was Gene Siskel who determined a movie’s quality by the following dictum: Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch? The films of Hong Sang-soo sometimes feel like you’re just watching a documentary actors sitting around and eating, though a key difference in the Sang-soo world is that they’ll also be drinking. My enjoyment of Claire’s Camera (2017) was often predicated on the delight in watching Kim Min-hee and Isabelle Huppert stand on a beach in Cannes complementing each other. Sang-soo’s film was shot during the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and the festival is occasionally discussed, yet happening off-camera in the background. The actors are not playing themselves but performing as characters, and yet, as often the case with Sang-soo, there’s a meta-textual element.

Min-hee plays Jeon who works for a production team in town to premiere a Korean director’s film at Cannes, Jeong Jin-yeong. When the film opens, Min-hee’s character is let go from her job on account of not having an “honest” character. Mystified and distressed, she decides to spend some time at Cannes since she can’t book a flight home. Eventually she crosses paths with Claire (Huppert), a French woman visiting Cannes for the first time to see a friend’s film. A teacher with an interest in photography, she uses a polaroid camera to continually document what’s around her, including people. For some not familiar with Sang-soo’s whole thing – how he writes scenes the morning of shooting, often constructing the narrative as he goes, mainly focused on people talking and sitting and drinking – this film might seem slight. There’s an obvious air that it was shot quickly and cheaply, and that there might be five key locations often visited twice. To me, this was very charming and funny, humour born from observation and the interactions between people, and Huppert’s screen persona always imbues even a kind-hearted, lovely character with a strange, off-kilter aura. And it has sad moments often revolving around Min-hee’s treatment, and her poise as a presence. Recommended.

The Novelist’s Film (2022)

I’m still reading Dennis Lim’s book about Hong Sang-soo’s film Tale Of Cinema, which is used to discuss the prolific auteur’s body of work. I’ve seen a lot of Sang-soo’s films this year, mainly due to the fact that many of them were added to SBS OnDemand. By seeing more than one of Sang-soo’s productions, you understand the recurring themes, actors and overall approach. The action is mainly characters talking, eating and drinking together. Reading further into Sang-soo’s filmmaking style, the fact that he writes scenes early in the morning on the day of shooting contributes to the understanding of unfolding creation to the narrative. Reducing the filmmaking apparatus to one camera, unbroken master shots with the occasional zoom-in, and simple locations (cafes, offices, bookstores, cinemas), and hence has been able to complete films quickly, often releasing two to three in a year (running times ranging from 90 minutes to an hour).

The Novelist’s Film (2022) made me think of a couple of things, one related to a thematic interest of the director’s and another more broader and outside of his thematic concerns. The main character is an acclaimed, popular novelist Jun-hee (Lee Hye-young, who was great as the lead in Sang-soo’s In Front Of Your Face) who takes a trip to a quieter area outside the city. Often Sang-soo includes meta elements in his movies and this film in particular seems to be a conversation across his characters about the director’s creative thinking. The novelist is a bit stuck, feeling uninspired to write, and through the story, she meets an actor who doesn’t work as much. There’s an air of pausing between characters who have artistic occupations, and the meeting provides inspiration to the novelist: she decides to make a short film with the actress Gil-soo (Kim Min-hee, Sang-soo’s partner and collaborator) inspired by her presence. Conversations revolve around getting older, resting, and whether a good life is bound up with being creatively productive or financially secure. Essentially the way forward reflects Sang-soo’s own practice, and in many ways the film is a knowing statement of purpose.

Outside of the meta element about creativity, I reflected upon the days, rarer now, where it would start with one thing, catching up with a friend, and then keep progressing unexpectedly. You decide to have one more drink, one location begets another, an aimless walk leads to an unexpected encounter. The Novelist’s Film takes place over one day and we follow the main character move without a plan, deciding to go for a walk and visit a tower, bumping into people she knows or meeting people for the first time. Both comedy and depth comes from observing the characters conversing, humour in the awkwardness between then, and emotion from what might be unsaid or bluntly imparted. The beauty of the film is how these two connections are tied together, that creativity and ideas are inspired by living life and letting things unfold rather than forcing them into prescribed work. Shot digitally in black and white, film assembles mundane environments like bookshops and restaurants and parks, which are rendered acutely, and occasionally finds visual poetry, such as when characters walk up the park steps into a white sky of nothingness.

Regular players appear such as Kwon Hae-hyo and Ki Joo-bong, and particularly Seo Young-hwa who always brings a grounded presence to Sang-soo’s movies. Would The Novelist’s Film be a good entry point to Hong Sang-soo? Possibly – it has a strong protagonist in the Novelist who does not hold back in some social situations, though the ending might be elusive without knowledge of Sang-soo’s history particularly with Kim Min-hee. The Woman Who Ran and Grass were the first ones I saw, and both are like a collection of scenes and either would be a good start. I would also recommend Tale Of Cinema and In Front Of Your Face.

Available on SBS On Demand. Recommended.

On The Beach At Night Alone (2017)

A beach is always a contemplative site in cinema, and South Korean director Hong Sang-soo seems to return to it as a space for his characters. On The Beach At Night Alone (2017) features two beaches – one in Hamburg, the other in South Korea – and neither takes place in the pitch-black of night where the sea and sky are indivisible. Rather, they both border on evening, and each beach is cold and grey, framing the solitary figure Young-hee (Kim Min-hee) within a lonely atmosphere. If the viewer wasn’t familiar with Sang-soo’s whole thing as a director, nor the real life events it seems to be processing and reflecting, would they still find it compelling? I think so – Min-hee is an engaging presence, and it’s cinematic enough to see her stand in a coat, smoking on a cigarette, and for the camera to observe her character’s contemplation.

Divided into two parts, we begin in Hamburg where Young-hee, an actor, is visiting and spending time with a friend, Jee-young (Seo Young-hwa); they walk and talk, look for something to eat, visit a bookstore. Young-hee has left South Korea after a public scandal due to an affair she has entered into with a married film director. Waiting for him to visit, and thinking of how she wants to live her life in the wake of it, the movie also introduces surreal elements, one scene in particular that surprises and is left hanging in the viewer’s mind: “What did that mean?” and “Will it come back again?” This allows an element of tension and mystery to permeate the everyday reality of Young-hee’s character. We then catch up with her returning to Korea, a small town where she bumps into old friends and acquaintances, sits and drinks, and eventually her reserved poise turns to anger and frustration.

While the title I believe is based off a Walt Whitman poem, the film carries through with its promise of loneliness and introspection. Of course, everything has another layer of meaning if aware that Sang-soo was married when he and Kim Min-hee began a relationship during the making of the film, Right Then, Wrong Now; she has since been a regular star and featured player, and collaborative element in his following movies. Reading interviews with Sang-soo, it’s interesting to hear how he makes his films, waking up early to write a scene that will eventually be shot later that day with his crew, the sense of opening improvisation when he begins a project, leading to a further shape with each new scene, shot basically in order of how it appears:

“I know that reality is something I can never reach out and grab. We are all living under the influence of being human beings, so it is a good thing that it is unattainable. Even though I feel totally lost, even though I feel pain, it’s not real, in a way.”

While scenes recurred from previous Sang-soo movies I’d seen, like The Woman Who Ran and Introduction, I do think this is one of his strongest, buoyed by Min-hee’s great central performance, and its thorny fictionalised take on what would be common knowledge to Korean audiences and cineastes. Available to stream on SBS On Demand. Recommended.