A Information to the Quiet, Low-Price range Cinema of Korea’s Hong Sang-soo

The globalisation of Korean popular culture has assured the place of numerous Korean filmmakers in western public consciousness. Within the mainstream, Academy Award winner Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) has few rivals moreover his powerhouse up to date Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) – whose newest movie arrives within the UK through the BFI London Movie Pageant subsequent month. Within the arthouse world, Lee Chang-dong (Burning) is among the most esteemed and highly-decorated, however on the subject of individualistic low-budget cinema, Hong Sang-soo is in a league of his personal.

The auteur has made 28 options in 26 years. His movies, usually made with out a script and on a finances of lower than $100,000, have performed at Cannes at least eleven instances – and since 2020, he’s picked up main awards at Berlin Movie Pageant on three consecutive years (together with Greatest Director and the Grand Jury Prize). He works with among the trade’s best stars – together with French Oscar nominee Isabelle Huppert (Elle) and Korean Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung (Minari). And his worldwide followers embrace administrators like Claire Denis (Beau Travail) and the nice Martin Scorsese.

In 2004, the Goodfellas director praised Hong’s “masterful sense of storytelling” in movies that “peel like an orange” to disclose layers of depth and which means. Delicately filmed, Hong’s works are quiet and observational, utilising pure dialogue in broad, uncut scenes designed to disclose the nuances and intricacies of on a regular basis human relationships. His characters are saturated with autobiographical components (the modest lives of movie administrators and actors are a core focus) and booze – with soju-fuelled chats at low cost eating places and cafes a mainstay. These are tales that concern life’s fundamental frustrations, encounters, ambiguities and potentialities – as emphasised by Hong’s frequent experimentations with construction and kind.

The director’s newest work is exemplary of his distinctive model of cinema – In Entrance of Your Face is launched in UK cinemas from September 23 through New Wave Movies. In anticipation, AnOther goes down the rabbit gap to discover some highlights of the director’s intensive and addictive filmography – discover our picks under.

Story of Cinema, 2005

Hong’s sixth movie – his second to compete for the Palme d’Or at Cannes – is the perfect place to start out. Story of Cinema noticed the director strengthen his place as auteur and introduce signature stylistic qualities, equivalent to his trademark zoom photographs, whereas additionally experimenting with construction and narrative. He does this so brilliantly right here that the movie is taken into account one thing of an indie masterpiece at this time.

Story of Cinema follows a younger man as he reunites with an outdated feminine acquaintance. The pair grow to be lovers after a nighttime journey by Seoul’s eating places, bars, and karaoke parlours within the shadow of the enduring N Seoul Tower. Unexpectedly, the couple comply with a suicide pact, and try and undergo with it. Then, all the pieces modifications. This narrative, it seems, was a part of a movie-within-a-movie, with theatre patron Kim (Kim Sang-kyung, Recollections of Homicide) then discovering himself reliving related occasions in actual life as he pursues its lead actress, Choi (Uhm Ji-won), within the second half.

In August 2022, the movie was explored by Dennis Lim as a part of Fireflies Press’ masterful ten-part guide sequence Decadent Editions – every of which explores a distinct milestone textual content in up to date cinema. On the guide’s reverse cowl, Academy Award-winning director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Automobile) describes Hong’s sixth movie aptly: “Right here is the crystal through which all of the others are mirrored … the gateway into the Hong multiverse.”

Hill of Freedom, 2014

Set totally inside Bukchon Hanok Village – a preserved neighbourhood of conventional homes in Seoul – Hill of Freedom tells the story of Mori (Ryo Kase, Silence), a younger Japanese man who has come to Korea hoping to reunite with a former lover, Kwon. Amidst a sequence of encounters with locals, he finds himself attracting the eye of native café employee Yeongsan (Moon So-ri, Oasis).

Heat, light-hearted and humorous, Hill of Freedom – which premiered at Venice in 2014 – crams allure and a number of other nice actors into its 66-minute run-time. However what makes it such a compelling piece of labor is its revolutionary construction. The story is recounted by Mori’s letters to Kwon, that are dropped on the ground early on within the movie. When the pages are collected, they’re muddled into the unsuitable order – inflicting all types of temporal chaos for the movie itself. Viewers are left to find out the order of scenes for themselves (clue: keep watch over individuals’s garments).

The Day a Pig Fell Into the Effectively, 1996

The Day a Pig Fell Into the Effectively – which follows 4 leads whose narratives have been penned by 4 totally different writers – is a little bit of an outlier in Hong’s canon resulting from its formal limitations and darker tone. As an alternative of trademark Hong mumblecore, this higher-budgeted debut movie seems to take affect from the Taiwanese New Wave, notably movies like Edward Yang’s The Terrorizers or Tsai Ming-liang’s Rebels of the Neon God. That is made specifically evident by Hong’s compositional use of mirrors and window-frames.

Whereas much less outstanding than his later works, purists will admire it for its historic worth. For one, it options the movie debut of future Korean cinema famous person Music Kang-ho (Parasite; Sympathy for Mr Vengeance), who seems right here in a traditional Nineties get-up consisting of an enormous, double-breasted go well with and a floppy mop-top.

Girl Is the Way forward for Man, 2004

Extra exemplary of traditional Hong fashion, although nonetheless bleaker and fewer humour-laden than his later works, was Hong’s first movie to display in competitors at Cannes. Girl Is the Way forward for Man appeared in 2004 12 months alongside Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy – and funnily sufficient, each movies share a essential actor in Yoo Ji-tae (he performs the primary villain in Park’s revenge thriller traditional), although they’re worlds aside when it comes to kind, manufacturing and themes.

Over a soju-saturated lunch as a winter snow falls, two boorish males uncover that they each as soon as dated the identical lady – and determine to trace her down. One man is a textbook alpha – a college artwork trainer (Yoo) who brazenly requests crude sexual favours from numerous ladies, whereas the opposite, a struggling filmmaker (Kim Tae-woo), struggles to manage his feelings whereas inebriated. Their rivalry of their pursuit of the identical lady will in the end solely spotlight their very own insecurities. 

This criticism of male archetypes is a typical theme of Hong’s movies, although this movie is extra fascinating for its position in shaping the director’s recognisable fashion. One prolonged lunchtime encounter at an area restaurant, captured side-on in long-take with a static digital camera, would grow to be emblematic of his work – this scene can be repeated repeatedly in numerous totally different guises all through his filmography hereafter.

Proper Now, Unsuitable Then, 2015

This Golden Leopard winner on the 2015 Locarno Worldwide Movie Pageant virtually seems like Hong’s reply to Groundhog Day. Or, at the very least, a recreation of spot the distinction. Half one (titled Proper Then, Unsuitable Now) opens with a movie director (Jung) arriving within the metropolis of Suwon for a screening of one in all his movies. He wanders palace grounds and meets a good looking lady (Kim Min-hee, The Handmaiden), a painter, who reluctantly agrees to affix him for espresso, then sushi, then soju. Seemingly oblivious to her destructive physique language, the director finally ends up at a small social gathering with the painter – the place he embarrasses himself, terminating their would-be fling.

Half two (Proper Now, Unsuitable Then) repeats the very same sequence of occasions with minor variations, leading to a wholly totally different conclusion. Is that this the movie director’s fantasy of how issues would have turned out? Hong would provide a solution at a press convention for the movie’s launch. Requested what his grand imaginative and prescient was, the director responded by drawing two circles related by two strains, writing beneath: “infinite worlds potential” – an thought fairly simply utilized to any one in all his structurally experimental works.

On the Seashore at Night time Alone, 2017

A once-famous actress named Younger-hee (Kim Min-hee) mingles round Hamburg with a pal, ruminating on a relationship she’d had with a married movie director. Later, she returns to Korea and learns that her ex-lover was torn aside by the repercussions of their affair. Between drunken outbursts and café conversations, Younger-hee finds herself drawn to the open seafront – the place she wonders what would unfold if she have been to satisfy her former lover once more.

A nice efficiency from Kim Min-hee apart (she gained the Greatest Actress award at Berlin Movie Pageant), this movie’s true energy lies in its context. On the movie’s premiere in 2017, director Hong confirmed the very public hypothesis that he had had an affair with Kim herself in the course of the manufacturing of earlier movie, Proper Now, Unsuitable Then – which resulted within the collapse of his first marriage.

With this information, it turns into fairly apparent that Younger-hee and her fictional ex-lover are stand-ins for Kim and Hong themselves. The movie thus turns into a form of confession and clarification of their real-life affair, regardless of the narrative veering away from the true end result of occasions (the pair are nonetheless collectively in actual life). So far as Hong’s enigmatic meta-narratives go, this uncooked and susceptible work actually pushes the envelope – which solely makes it extra fascinating.

In Entrance of Your Face, 2021

After selecting up the Greatest Director award at Berlin in 2020 for the quietly absorbing The Girl Who Ran, Hong debuted one other minimalist gem centred upon feminine characters and their relationships at Cannes in 2021. Due for vast launch within the UK this month, In Entrance of Your Face is a vibrant and relatable work that crystallises lots of Hong’s finest tropes.

Sang-ok (Lee Hye-young), a former actress, has returned to Seoul and reunited along with her sister (Jo Yoon-hee) after a while within the US taking care of a liquor retailer. After a lakeside breakfast and a few catching up, she heads off on a nostalgic bent – revisiting her childhood dwelling (now a florist) earlier than a gathering with a movie director ends in an sudden revelation. All of the whereas, she stays centered on the small joys – those which are, she says, “in entrance of my face”.

Allusions to desires, religion and the afterlife trace at deeper readings, however In Entrance of Your Face is in any other case an easy and accessible movie that turns the theme of ageing on its head. As all the time, Hong’s fashion and kind is imperious, with naturalistic conversations captured in natural, free-flowing lengthy takes (which go unbroken for so long as 20 minutes) – making a transfixing environment through which the actors’ distinctive craft is laid naked.