Right Now, Wrong Then

How many times have you fallen in love with the creation of a hitherto unknown director from the first frame of the first film of his you watch? I confess that it happens to me quite rarely. This is what happened from the first scene that opens 'Right Now, Wrong Then', the 2016 film by Korean director Sang-soo Hong. Korean cinema has given me many reasons of satisfaction in recent years, but I had never encountered a film by Hong before. I understand that he writes and directs very personal films, all set in his own universe, on average about one film each year, in the style and pace of Woody Allen's productions. 'Right Now, Wrong Then' is a simple, randomly picked story from life, and at the same time a story about cinema and art, not only because its hero is a director (alter ego of the author?), but also because the way the film is structured is a subtle commentary on the art of making films and a starting point for thoughts and discussions.

The story. Jae-yeong, a well-known director of 'art' films, arrives due to a mis-communication a day earlier in a peripheral city where he is going to meet with spectators after their watching his film. Trying to 'kill time', he wanders through Buddhist temples and meets Min-hee, a young woman, a little disoriented, a little painter, whom he invites first to a coffee and then to a sushi dinner accompanied by a lot of soju liquor, to end the evening with a meeting at a cafe with the young woman's friends. A discreet dialogue begins between the two, followed by a hesitant idyll. Love story or flirtation? The viewer has the opportunity to ask this question twice, because exactly in the middle of the film the story begins again, with the same characters and small changes.

The beauty of the film consists exactly in the differences of nuances between the two variants of the same script, with the same characters, filmed in the same places, saying approximately the same lines. And yet, the story is different, the light falls differently, the feelings of the characters differ, the emotions of the spectators change. 'Right Now, Wrong Then' is a meditation on life in which the details and moods of the moment can play an overwhelming role, but it is also a brilliant cinematic exercise proving that the director's vision and nuances added by actors to their characters can lead to more different movies based on the same script. Sang-soo Hong is a talented director who masters all the details of his craft and has assimilated the lessons of the great filmmakers. In this film we feel some of the influences of Yasujirô Ozu (long shots, some with a fixed camera, making room for the psychology of the characters) and Hsiao-Hsien Hou (the urban anxiety), but the film also has a clear Korean and personal imprint of the director in the way in which the characters fit into their social environment. The actors play with a wonderful finesse and depth, highlighting the common features and psychological variations of the two variants of their heroes. 'Right Now, Wrong Then' is a film that boldly experiments in structure but retains an elegant classic in the way it is made. I was charmed.

Maybe it's because I haven't seen any of Sang-soo's other films but Right Now, Wrong Then left me cold and unimpressed. I can see the appeal this film has but I personally found the film a tad annoying. It feels more like a South Korean remake of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby that admittedly was more interesting than The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. I was also surprised to see Lady Hideko here. Kim Min- Hee is one of few things that are great about the film, even if she wasn't as impressive as she was in The Handmaiden. If you like the director you might like Right Now, Wrong Then but I was overall just left cold with the film.

Contrary to the many Korean films I have seen lately, in which the originality, the creativity, the excellence of the stories and the great representations generally prevail, in this film all these aspects fell short of my expectations. I expected a lot more, not least because the little synopsis I read about the film was quite promising. In recent times, this was the first Korean film that deceived me. I did not feel special empathy for any character and found the performances at a level below what is normal for Korean actors and actresses.

I've been a fan of Sang-soo for some years yet his frustrating insistence to continually repeat himself is now annoying me.

Sure you can guarantee failed romance and time wasted drunk in korean bars in Sang-soo films and I'm fine with that in theory.

The problem I have is that everything else once you've seen a few just seems so repetitive as well...

Ie the kinds of creative characters he chooses to portray, the form of the films, the dynamics between characters, the voice over narration, I could go on and on.

In totality, they are just far far too repetitive for me. I was absolutely fine with all this until this film. For me this film was like the product of a once great now semi-senile 90 year old director just repeating himself after a golden age of great films decades before.

He really is starting to make the decrepit Woody Allen look original!

I'll probably watch the next Sang-soo film that comes out as well but with a lot more caution not expecting much.

This film won the Golden Leopard (Best Film award) at the 2015 Locarno Film Festival. By mistake, a film director arrives in a town a day early to attend a screening of one of his films. With time to kill, he strikes up a conversation with an aspiring painter who he meets in a temple and they spend the rest of the day together. Although he finds her attractive, she is considerably younger than him and neither of them are particularly outgoing. A bit like Sliding Doors or Kieslowski's Blind Chance, the film splits into two different versions of what happens over the next 24 hours but, unlike those two films, the outcome depends not so much on chance but on how the main character chooses to behave. Any further info would inevitably contain spoilers so let's just say that it reminded me of some of Erich Roemer's films and is a sort of moral tale. Whether or not you will like Right Now, Wrong Then will probably depend on what you think of the dialogue, which pretty much dominates (there is not much action and little in the way of visuals or soundtrack). In my view, it is almost a really good film but the script needed sharpening up, as my attention started wandering off more than once. Perhaps a bit more humour and a slightly faster pace would have helped, However, it is a thought-provoking film and I found it ultimately satisfying when it ended, which is why I give it 7/10.