“The women are the true heroes, the brave ones. Violated (defeated?), as they are, they remain the masters of time, of the time that divides the past and the present of the story, of all the time lost to the men.
“The Power of Kangwon Province (1998): leaving with a friend to tour this tourist-province par excellence, the hero puts a secretary at his university in charge of taking care of two goldfish.
“Reiteration becomes reversal in Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000), the most complicated instance of Hong’s doubling.
“His work teems with Hong look-alikes, alter egos, and surrogates, most of them self-absorbed, obtuse, feckless, forever doing the wrong thing: insisting on paying a host for a home-cooked meal; crying out the name of another woman in the middle of sex; drunkenly demanding a blowjob from a long-a
Munho, a young art professor, is catching up with his friend Hunjoon, a broke filmmaker who has just returned from the United States. After a few drinks, they decided to track down Sunhwa, a young girl they were both in love with a few years earlier.
“I don’t think you really understood the film.”
Yong-sil in Geuk jang jeon [Tale of Cinema] (2005)
“In Hong’s latest, Woman on the Beach, which is something of a career summation, his self-reproach takes on a more mordant tone.
“Hong is the king of number two: two men for a women (Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, 2000), two women for a man (Woman on the Beach, 2006), two chapters in a male-female relation (Turning Gate, 2002), two films in one (Tale of Cinema, 2005), two filmmak
“In Hong Sang-soo’s work there is a constant trait, which is neither really stylistic (it’s not a matter of form), nor frankly thematic (it’s not a matter of content either), and which returns, like a butterfly – and even, as its course is erratic, like a moth, the ultimate uncatchable insect.
1. Take a walk through the village.
2. Take a walk on the beach.
3. Have lunch at a famous restaurant.
4. Collect a pretty shell or a nice souvenir.
5. See if there are tours through the mud flats.
6. Find someone to play badminton with.
“Near the end of Alain Resnais’ masterpiece Muriel, a man sings a music hall chanson about time and memory that mournfully repeats the word déjà to emphasize the rue of those who “fear the future, regret the past.” He could be describing Hong Sang-soo’s aimless characters – “I have nowhe
Set in a seaside town, the film consists of three parts that tell the story of three different women, all named Anne and all played by French actress Isabelle Huppert.
“The plot of Right Now, Wrong Then is formed by a minimal situation upon which a delay and a set of variations of brief scenes are established.
“In Hong’s bittersweet sonatas, typically composed of multiple movements, repeated figures and modulating motives, any relationship or situation is susceptible to variability: there can always be another version, another chance, another time.
« Le 23 novembre à Paris, 15 heures. Je veux parler de quelqu’un. D’un homme de vingt-cinq ans tout au plus. C’est un homme très beau qui veut mourir avant d’être repéré par la mort. Vous l’aimiez. Plus que ça. »
“Hong captures these contrasting dramas in typically unadorned style, utilizing the hotel as both a symbolic space of refuge and reconciliation and a practical setting for the comings and goings of a variety of personalities (although, curiously, these five seem to be the hotel’s only visitors –
“The owner of a cafe in a traditional district of Seoul is never shown. But we do discover he likes classical music.
While her husband is on a business trip, Gamhee meets three women on the outskirts of Seoul. She first visits two close friends at their homes; the third, an older acquaintance, she encounters by chance at an independent cinema.
A young man travels from South Korea to Berlin to surprise his girlfriend.
Sangok has recently moved in with her sister to get used to Korea again after a long stay in the USA. She lives from day to day, in the present moment, when she meets a filmmaker who offers her a project.
Successful middle-aged filmmaker Byungsoo (Kwon Haehyo) drops by to visit and introduce his daughter to an old friend, Mrs. Kim (Lee Hyeyoung), the owner of a charming apartment building that houses a restaurant on the ground floor. After Mrs.
A female novelist takes a long trip to visit a bookstore run by a younger colleague who has fallen out of touch.