The Novelist's Film (2022)

Direction: Hong Sang-soo
Country: South Korea

Adopting the same naturalistic and conversational style he's been accustoming us, the prolific South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo delivers a mildly entertaining film orchestrated with discreet virtuosity. Centered on artists facing creative blocks and dealing with short period hiatus in their careers, The Novelist’s Film is steady in mood, uneven in the rhythm, and vulnerable as a story.

At the very center, we have a celebrated novelist, Kim Junhee (Lee Hye-yeong), who leaves Seoul to visit an old friend in the suburbs. In her way back, she crosses paths with a director (Kwon Hae-hyo) with whom she almost worked in the past, and a trendy actress (the director’s wife Kim Min-hee), whose work she admires. Both think she has a lot of charisma, but she decides to discard the former and make a short film with the latter. 

It’s a movie in love with words and human connection, pulling subtle punches with a cerebral pragmatism and purity of tone. Sang-soo’s efforts result in a contemplative film that, stuttering at times, also plays too much with coincidences. Despite the visible exaggeration at this level, a worn-out drinking scene, and nothing newfangled to produce a spark, we let ourselves be carried away by the charm of the protagonists.

The passable The Novelist’s Film doesn't transcend the director’s intimidating filmography, whose previous entry, In Front of Your Face, is a stronger bet.

In Front of Your Face (2021)

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.

The Woman Who Ran (2020)

Direction: Hong Sang-soo
Country: South Korea

As usual, the prolific Korean director Hong Sang-soo brings his realism to the fore in his 24th drama, The Woman Who Ran, a simplistic and quotidian account of three different encounters in the outskirts of Seoul involving a common subject, Gamhee (Sang-soo’s muse Kim Minhee). The latter is a married woman who has never been apart from her translator husband in five years of marriage except for the occasions that this film portray. 

At first, she visits her good-natured friend Youngsoon (Seo Younghwa), a divorcee who lives in the countryside and needs time for herself. Youngsoon lives with a roommate, Youngji (Lee Eunmi), and both feed stray cats, a detail that upsets a newly arrived neighbor. The second visit takes her to a fun urban neighborhood where Suyoung (Song Seonmi), a dance producer and pilates teacher, bought an apartment with a view to the Inwangsan Mountain. This friend is emotionally involved with the architect that lives above her, but keeps being stalked by a young poet with whom she had a one-night stand. The third and most painful encounter happens at an independent cinema where she bumps into her former lover, now a famous director, and her ex-friend, Woojin (Kim Saebyuk), who married him.

Clearly, the central topic here is the obsessed idea of living glued to a husband, but there are also past issues in need of inner resolution. 

As the natural performances define feelings and shape characters, the film, mounted with incredible sobriety, adopts a minimalistic trait that fully depends on the actors’ proficiency. While the enigmatic title makes us suspect that Gamhee is running from her current life, the static camera work with urgent closeups and languid long takes are never synonym of emotional aridness.

Grass (2019)

Direction: Hong Sang-soo
Country: South Korea

Prolific Korean director Hong Sang-soo is known for little conversational diamonds of the modern cinema and Grass, lasting 66 minutes only, shows he still didn’t run out of narrative possibilities within the breezy, light fluency that characterizes his filmmaking style. Sang-soo keeps depicting unpretentious day-to-day situations with realism. Fortuitous encounters, actors, directors, booze, cafes, personal frustrations and peculiarities of the daily life are ubiquitous elements in his works.

The cast includes the same collaborators that join Isabelle Huppert in Claire’s Camera, namely, Kim Min-hee, the director’s muse, and Jung Jin-young. Their gracious performances feel so natural that viewers may feel like voyeurs of true-life episodes. It's true that the story produces little dramatic fireworks and doesn't conclude resolutely. However, it’s remarkable how Sang-soo manages to completely engross us in a tale that only exists for our cinematic pleasure.

Grass, his 22nd feature film, centers in Areum (Min-hee), a silent, observant young woman who spends a few daily hours in a local café typing on her laptop. She seems to be writing stories inspired by the personal dramas and complicated relationships of the ones sit around her table. A young drinking couple exchange accusations over the death of a close friend; an older suicidal actor is looking for a room and asks his younger former lover if he could stay with her, now that she moved from a tiny apartment to a two-story building; a mature heartless man blames a woman of toying with an old professor and lead him to suicide; a vain director needs something to inspire him and persuades the staring Areum to enter in his new film.

Where the reality ends and fantasy begins is up to the viewer. Meanwhile, Areum shows her temperamental side while hanging out with her brother. According to him, she suffers from spinster’s hysteria.

The classical music is occasionally intrusive while the black-and-white cinematography is aesthetically appropriate for a type of fiction embroiled in a deceptively philosophical guise.