Dangsin-eolgul-apeseo

Hong Sangsoo puts together his most naked and eloquent film in this intimate portrait of a woman at a very special moment in her life, a woman whose optimistic life philosophy allows her to face the most difficult circumstances with an unwavering luminosity, even a certain kind of grace. This is perhaps Hong’s most honest and moving film, light and heartbreaking at the same time, awkward but pure and beautiful, like the melody the protagonist plays at one point on a guitar. His brilliance is so casual that some people may not even realize the level of honesty and intelligence in this film, in which he puts aside any kind of affective reluctance and tries to move the viewer emotionally.
The film’s pièce de résistance is its last 40 minutes. It’s a longer version of a classic Hong scene: two people sitting at the table in a restaurant having a conversation that will go from kindness to awkwardness, from laughter to sadness, from cinema to music and from food to alcohol. In this long and wonderful scene, it’s as if all of Hong’s characters from all his movies are gathered together in a melancholic and beautiful celebration that sums up and crowns an extraordinary career. (Diego Lerer)

Hong Sangsoo: VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS (2000), WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN (2004), TALE OF CINEMA (2005), WOMAN ON THE BEACH (2006), NIGHT AND DAY (2008), HA HA HA (2010), IN ANOTHER COUNTRY (2012), NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON (2013), OUR SUNHI (2013), HILL OF FREEDOM (2014), RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN (2015), YOURSELF AND YOURS (2016), ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE (2017), CLAIRE’S CAMERA (2017), THE DAY AFTER (2017), GRASS (2018), HOTEL BY THE RIVER (2018), THE WOMAN WHO RAN (2020), INTRODUCTION (2021)