Hong Sangsoo

[Michael Kerpan]

FWIW -- My top Rohmer films are the summer ones (Green Ray and Tale of Summer) and a winter one (Tale of Winter).

I like Hill of Freedom -- but Woman on the Beach shares my top spot (with Virgin Stripped Bare). Can't wait for this release (already pre-ordered).

[barbarella satyricon]

...

[Michael Kerpan]

I've never really seen Christmas dealt with in a Korean movie or TV series -- as opposed to Japan where it has no religious significance but seems to be treated as rather like our valentine's day by young people (but with western Christmas decorations). So, who knows what HSS might eventually do.

[therewillbeblus]

Hong’s latest, The Woman Who Ran, just popped up on backchannels with English subs

[Michael Kerpan]

Hong’s latest, The Woman Who Ran, just popped up on backchannels with English subs

I wonder when it will appear in a legitimate venue?

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Probably not that long, Cinema Guild picked it up in May and it had its U.S. premiere at NYFF a couple of months back.

[therewillbeblus]

I haven't liked the last batch of Hong films too much, and The Woman Who Ran unfortunately doesn't change that streak. It's a return to lighter fare, but more in line with his less attractive mumblecore sensibilities. This also may be the Hong film with the least visible male presence, though toxic masculinity is certainly addressed and skewered in side characters, and in a roundabout way empowers the female experience without Hong needing to insert himself in for self-flagellation- or at least that's how it appears. This could be seen as a sign of humility- though I think he does that plenty when featuring raw confrontations of his characteristics (and arguably did this best with a surrogate female character in Nobody's Daughter Haewon)- and the choices can easily be taken as avoidance or an attempt to get completely outside of himself and what he knows, which comes across as a bit empty.

The best reading I can muster is that Hong's trademarked self-admitted 'need for control' part's self-insertion is presented here in a new position of 'voyeur/fantasizer', dreaming up what his wife would get up to when away from him, and getting to share in that experience where his real-life self has no mastery. I like that interpretation as fitting within his thematic wheelhouse- more than I like the film, and it leaves room for the typical Hong duality of inner conflict for the artist. Is that analysis more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than a modest or confessional examination of gender, because it gratifies his desire to be the best man of all we see; or is this likely another self-conscious jab at his ego, knowing full-well that he's unable to part from his own neurotic fantasies; and even shamefully omitting himself from the film because he knows that if he did show up, he'd be just as bad? I did like the self-referential gags on Kim Min-hee's part, stating that her husband should just "write what he knows" and that he's "published too many books" (going a bit on-the-nose for the addictively prolific artist, making a movie about something he has no idea about here!) which helps beg the question: Why make this movie? as well as reinforce the answer: Because it's a new avenue to explore his ego/humility bifurcation, getting(running?) away from himself in another direction, but finding himself along for the ride regardless, always inescapably bound in some shape or form

Spoiler

though the final interaction with a man from her past is also be a bit of a self-negating move on his worth. Even if the existential impact is clearly there in nostalgia, he's not really given any opportunity to be anything other than an awkward guy engaging in small-talk and self-delusional about smoking. Kim Min-hee's ability to move on and sit independently is a nice dose of self-effacement in keeping himself right-sized and granting his wife (or rather, her granting herself) the power to choose what's important to her without his omniscient knowledge.

[kubelkind]

And just so I know what thread I’m posting in (neither Rohmer nor Holiday Favorites): If Hong Sangsoo continues at his usual rate of output for at least a few more years, we might get some kind of Christmas movie out of him yet.

The first section of "Tale Of Cinema" takes place at Christmas. Nobody mentions it, but there are christmas trees and a santa in the streets. I guess a story about a suicide pact hardly makes for a holiday favourite. Or maybe it does...

[barbarella satyricon]

...

[kubelkind]

Me too, I rewatched it last night as a facebook friend mentioned it jokingly as a "christmas film" which I didn't remember at all either. There isn't a whole lot of christmas in it at all! It was one of the first Hongs I saw and a revisit, as always with Hong, was very worthwhile.

[kubelkind]

The best reading I can muster is that Hong's trademarked self-admitted 'need for control' part's self-insertion is presented here in a new position of 'voyeur/fantasizer', dreaming up what his wife would get up to when away from him, and getting to share in that experience where his real-life self has no mastery.

I like the new one very much indeed but I had a much less autobiographically aligned reading of it. For me, it was a return to the episodic puzzle films that are my favourite area of the Hong ouvre. And there are plentiful puzzles to ponder here, the title being the most obvious one (which woman ran exactly, and from whom, of course). But what are we to make of small but probably significant details such as

Spoiler

the film that Gam-hee watches in the cinema at the end is in monochrome one time she sees it and colour the next. Is it two films? Two experiences of the same film? Does the form of the film change depending upon the viewer's mood? If we can accept that theory, can we apply it to the three similar but different stories in the film? Similarly, each of three stories feature a mountain. The same mountain from three different views or three mountains? Maybe the three stories are like this too. Each have recognisable similarities (all are recognisable as "mountains") but have different shapes and different features.

This is top tier Hong for me, and I've showed it to a couple of Hong newbies as an introduction to his work (with positive results). Its also got a great review in today's Guardian (a typical superficial Peter Bradshaw affair, but at least he likes it) which says Mubi are running it on Dec 20.

[Michael Kerpan]

I will be excited to see this, as I have been for everything he has made since I first discovered his work 17 years ago. So far, whatever paths he wants to take, have been fine for me to follow behind.

[therewillbeblus]

The best reading I can muster is that Hong's trademarked self-admitted 'need for control' part's self-insertion is presented here in a new position of 'voyeur/fantasizer', dreaming up what his wife would get up to when away from him, and getting to share in that experience where his real-life self has no mastery.

I like the new one very much indeed but I had a much less autobiographically aligned reading of it. For me, it was a return to the episodic puzzle films that are my favourite area of the Hong ouvre. And there are plentiful puzzles to ponder here, the title being the most obvious one (which woman ran exactly, and from whom, of course). But what are we to make of small but probably significant details such as

Spoiler

the film that Gam-hee watches in the cinema at the end is in monochrome one time she sees it and colour the next. Is it two films? Two experiences of the same film? Does the form of the film change depending upon the viewer's mood? If we can accept that theory, can we apply it to the three similar but different stories in the film? Similarly, each of three stories feature a mountain. The same mountain from three different views or three mountains? Maybe the three stories are like this too. Each have recognisable similarities (all are recognisable as "mountains") but have different shapes and different features.

This is top tier Hong for me, and I've showed it to a couple of Hong newbies as an introduction to his work (with positive results). Its also got a great review in today's Guardian (a typical superficial Peter Bradshaw affair, but at least he likes it) which says Mubi are running it on Dec 20.

Interesting thoughts, and I should clarify that my interpretations of Hong's "autobiographical" elements are usually less concrete than they are a bifurcation- where he feels magnetically pulled to insert himself (or, rather, relevant information to his own existential egocentric schema) into his films- while also pulling away from this process. Your reading of the scene described possibly being "two films" or "two experiences of the same film" or the "form of the film chang(ing) depending upon the viewer's mood" is the key to Hong's work for me. It's all about perspective and that splitting between one's own tunnel vision of solipsism and the greater peripheries of the outside world. Thus, I would argue, both of our readings are true: it's both an externalized puzzle film and a recycled exercise in Hong's own relationship to the material, which he's powerless over and finds some wavering acceptance in, often cycling itself within each film. Part of the reason I find Right Now, Wrong Then to be perhaps the most quintessential Hong film is in his heavily-introspective development of self-chastisement/delusion and self-acceptance while also desperately trying to give his new love space away from him, to be dignified independently from his own obsessive rationalizing. This feels like an extension from that more passionate acute love affair five years prior, into plateaued domesticity of their current stage of relationship that gives more room for autonomy, yet Hong still cannot completely divorce himself from that drive for self-importance and mastery.

[kubelkind]

Interesting, thanks. I need to see Right Now... again. I watched a lot of Hong very quickly and that wasn't one that "stuck" as much as the others, but a lot of his admirers seem to single it out as a favourite. I suspect that readings of Hong's work as being films "a clef" involve another bifurcation, that he'll suggest an autobiographical basis only to pull it away, just as if you've seen a few Hong films you will expect certain paths to be taken, only to find the rug pulled from under you. In Woman Who Ran

Spoiler

I expected the usual Hong fireworks when the characters started boozing in the first story, only this time the drinking is moderate and doesn't result in the usual arguments and recrimination. Maybe people managing to hold their drink for the first time in one of his films is a new development?

But there can also be surprises for Hong newbies

Spoiler

A friend who saw The Woman Who Ran as his first Hong film, who is also something of an animal lover, said that he was worried that the neighbour in the first story would come back and kill the "robber cats", but was surprised and amused when that particular narrative thread ends with the hilarious zoom in on the yawning cat (and the fact that the cat in question is clearly a well-fed house moggy rather than some feral beast just adds to the humour of that particular anticlimax for me).

[therewillbeblus]

Spoiler

I expected the usual Hong fireworks when the characters started boozing in the first story, only this time the drinking is moderate and doesn't result in the usual arguments and recrimination. Maybe people managing to hold their drink for the first time in one of his films is a new development?

Spoiler

That's a good point. The very first scene involves an admission of drinking too much and the rest of the film is about social sobriety, so I just assumed they were connected in the thematic way that her life of comfort and complacency in marriage and expected domesticity is a form of inebriation (as many of ours are, on autopilot or drunk on routine so to speak) and then by going outside of that comfort zone and reconnecting with others, she's becoming sober to what's beyond and hypervigilant around her past that keeps coming up for her anxiously. It's both uncomfortable and rewarding, but alcohol (or those signifiers of security that reinforce unconsciousness) have no place in this journey.

I definitely think it's worth looking at as a sign of development for Hong, but as I've argued in this thread, I think he's constantly developing between films, so nothing new- just in a new way!

[barbarella satyricon]

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[Michael Kerpan]

Hotel By the River is indeed a marvelous film. Structurally I like the way the father is at the center of 2 simultaneous but virtually unconnected stories (which threaten to intersect, but then never do). I love the characters, for all their flaws. But I still find it hard to pick top favorites except for my two that are anointed more on sentimental grounds than artistic ones.

[barbarella satyricon]

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[therewillbeblus]

I think List is both his most sentimental and artistically superior film. Nobody's Daughter Haewon would be next for sentimentality, and Right Now, Wrong Then and Woman on the Beach may be his next most artistically complex works.

[barbarella satyricon]

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[Michael Kerpan]

One thing I love about Woman on the Beach is the fact that is the way its shifts focus from the male protagonist to a female mid-way through (without having a formal switch point). I also love the episode of wary female-female bonding (at least temporarily) late in the film. But mainly I love it all. Glad my recommendation did not disappoint!

[barbarella satyricon]

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[Michael Kerpan]

Well, the pacing in WotB always seems relaxed and unhurried. I link Virgin and this film (I suppose) because they are Hong's first real forays into trying to capture a female-centered viewpoint for a sustained period of time (albeit not a whole film) -- thus anticipating many of his later almost-fully female-centric works.

[dadaistnun]

Hong won the best screenplay award for his latest, Introduction, at Berlin back in March. (Not surprisingly, he's already at work on a new one, In Front of Your Face, which probably wrapped in the time it's taken me to type this.)

Here's the 2-minute video he sent accepting the award. Begins with his acceptance speech (in English) and then, well, you'll see.

[Michael Kerpan]

Richard Brody has a very nice review of one of my favorite HSS films A Tale of Cinema in the New Yorker:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-f ... s-theatres (might be pay-walled)

Apparently this is being theatrically released in the USA for the first time -- I hope this presages a bluray release.

dadaistnun -- that video is utterly adorable. Thanks for the link.