After observing Hong Sang-soo’s previous three films bucolically retreating within a predictable safety zone of recurring preoccupations and reflexive encounters illustrated through linear narratives in somewhat uncharacteristic fashion following what had been his most structurally experimental film to date, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, it is refreshing to see Hong crystallize his now familiar […]
Hong Sang-soo makes a refreshing – and much welcomed – return to form with his most structurally complex, insightful, and thematically multilayered, yet deceptively facile and satisfying film since Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors in Tale of Cinema. The curious introduction of a narrative voice-over and the appearance of formalized, zooming into close-up – […]
A dashing and affluent man named Jae-hoon (Jeong Bo-seok) arrives alone at a hotel resort and begins to occupy his time lazing about (and cursorily inspecting the ventilation system of) the empty, comfortable suite until the anxious distraction of a telephone call from his mobile phone – auspiciously ringing the tune of a tin-pot, synthesized […]
Aboard a crowded overnight passenger train bound for the seaside resort of Kangwon province, an exhausted, half-asleep, standing commuter momentarily drifts into annoyed consciousness after having been bumped into by an oblivious, bespectacled, casually dressed man named Jaewan (Chun Jaehyun) on his way back to an adjoining car after purchasing refreshments and snacks from a […]
A struggling, self-absorbed writer named Hyo-sub (Kim Yui-seong) visits the home of a former colleague, ostensibly to retrieve a submitted draft for further editing (although, more likely, to probe into the possibility of receiving a writing fee advance on the authored piece). Having arranged a meeting with his occasional lover, a young woman named Min-jae […]
Olivier, Olivier is a hauntingly elliptical, visually mesmerizing revelation of a puzzling mystery. The story is set on the sweeping French countryside where Serge Duval (Francois Cluzet), a veterinarian, lives with his wife, Elisabeth (Brigitte Rouan) and their two young children. One day, while on an errand to deliver food to his ailing grandmother, the […]