Direction: Hong Sangsoo
Country: South Korea
Beautifully crafted, naturally flowing, and full of surprises, In Front of Your Face, the 26th feature from prolific South Korean director director Hong Sangsoo, is about a former actress (Lee Hye-yeong) who returns to Seoul after years living in the US. During her stay, she embraces the present moments, reconnects with her estranged sister (Yunhee Cho), visits the house of her childhood, and agrees to a lunch appointment with a director (Kwon Hae-hyo) who, admiring her past work, offers her an opportunity to star in his upcoming film.
Sangsoo keeps you engrossed by churning out active dialogues and a delicious lyricism. Yet, on this occasion, and despite the lightness of the storytelling, the core is heavyhearted, and there’s even room for doubt and ambiguity as well as dream and illusion. The most crucial aspect is the honesty with which Sangsoo enriches the emotional spectrum of his cerebral filmmaking style. Even if he decides to warp it, like it was the case here, his work always carries a sensorially alluring pleasure.
Themes like loneliness, reintegration, openness, and compassion are common, but this one brings more, starting off vividly casual before becoming unnervingly earnest, then plaintive and disconcerting, and ultimately mischievous. It’s a bittersweet work from a visionary director who, for the first time since 2017, picks an actress other than his muse, Kim Min-hee, to play the central character. Instead, the latter is credited as a co-producer. Under these circumstances, In Front of Your Face is another distinctive Sangsoo hit.
