Haebyeonui yeoin

Needing a quiet, relaxing environment in which to complete the script for his latest film, well-known director Kim Jung-rae heads to a largely deserted seaside resort with his friend, Won Chang-wook, and Won's beautiful girlfriend, Kim Mun-suk. Tensions quickly develop when Kim and Mun-suk become romantically involved with one another, leaving the erstwhile Won as essentially odd-man-out. Yet, terrified of making any kind of long term commitment, Kim backs away from Mun-suk at a crucial moment, causing a serious rupture in their relationship. It's only after a second woman comes into the picture that Mun-suk returns to the beach town, further complicating Kim's already complicated life - though providing possible fodder for the script he's having such a hard time completing.

Slow-moving, episodic and hypnotic, the Korean drama "Woman on the Beach" is wonderfully perceptive about human nature and the multi-faceted and complex ways in which people relate to one another. It's virtually impossible to pigeonhole any of the characters since they often act and react in ways that surprise and intrigue us. Director Sang-soo Hong relies largely on extended conversations to tell his story, an approach which allows the drama to unfold in a thoroughly naturalistic fashion, without having to resort to melodrama or contrivance to get its points across. To that end, the movie is filled with numerous seemingly irrelevant, off-the-cuff moments (including the final scene) that add immeasurably to the verisimilitude of the piece. As a result, every moment in the film feels unscripted and real, an illusion greatly enhanced by the excellent performances of Seung-woo Kim, Hyun-jung Go, Seon-mi Song and Tae-woo Kim.

Finally, the shuttered hotels and sparsely populated beaches and boardwalks provide an eerily appropriate backdrop for this tale of an individual so haunted by the demons and ghosts of his own past that he finds it difficult to live in the present.

Sometimes a Korean film really grabs me, like Il Mare, which was remade into The Lake House. It was a beautifully romantic film; just what this wasn't.

The dialog throughout was superficial and boring. It never really rose above the level you would expect in a bar or nightclub.

Superficial is a good term to describe Director Kim Jung-rae (Seung-woo Kim). he was really self-conscious and a bit misogynist. He was only interesting in bedding whomever he could; not in anything resembling a relationship.

After he had Kim Mun-Suk (Hyun-jung Go) he was ready to move on and get rid of her. He immediately started looking for someone that looked like her (Seon-mi Song) to bed.

It was a big disappointment, and, for a comedy, it wasn't even funny.

Hong Sang-Soo reminds me a lot of Eric Rohmer, which seems to be a comparison many have made before. But I would definitely rank him quite below Rohmer. I've seen four films by Hong now. I liked the first one I saw, Woman Is the Future of Man, a lot, but the other two, besides the one about which I'm currently writing, I only barely recall. Woman on the Beach seems far too similar to Woman Is the Future of Man for me to like it a lot. I didn't hate it, by any means, though I did eventually grow tired of it. I liked the initial conflict, where a man brings along a woman whom he thinks of as his girlfriend on a trip with a film director friend of his. The director is kind of a jerk, and the girl is immediately attracted to him – either that, or she is so bothered by the meek guy that she just wants to spurn him. Later on, she discovers that the director's jerkiness is a pretty clear character trait. Well, duh. Much as I remember from Woman Is the Future of Man, Hong's major insight seems to be that men (particularly film directors) are jerks, and that women like jerks, but also think they can change them. It's a pretty trite observation, really, and, in the end, kind of hateful toward both sexes. It doesn't help that the woman becomes a completely jealous shrew. If I'm remembering correctly, I liked the woman of Woman Is the Future of Man much better. She seemed, in the end, better and stronger than the men in her life.

I confess to not having seen any of this director's films, but on the basis of this, I probably won't bother. This is the story of a writer/director with writers block who basically treats women like garbage so he can find his muse and regain his creativity. Actually, he treats just about everyone in this film like garbage.I guess it is hero worship, because I couldn't understand why these seemingly intelligent women would fall for this fairly obnoxious, boorish individual. Set on a resort beach in Korea seemingly out of season, there is very little to do, so the lead character becomes mean to everyone around him. Perhaps the maker of this film felt the point was that there are two kinds of people, those who give and those who take. The two women the lead character spends time with are pathetic. I had high hopes for the character Moonsook, who in the beginning showed promise. She should have been a stronger character. The director keeps calling her very pretty/beautiful (see is pretty, but not beautiful), but then he treats her like dirt, calling her stupid twice. He gives writers a bad name. If the filmmaker's idea was to assuage some guilt he himself has, fine. He should have made a better film. This film is full of forced, vacuous dialog. I know I'll probably be in the minority on the opinion on this film, but I am a big Asian film fan and this one left me cold. Many times I pondered leaving the theater. In the audience of about 20 people there were maybe three chuckles from the dialog. I'd like to see the actress who plays Moonsook in another role. She probably is a good actress, but her character is useless. I shook my head a little at the people who were waiting in line for the next showing. If you're a fan of this filmmaker, maybe you're used to his kind of storytelling. I wanted to like it, and the reviews were mostly favorable. Mine isn't, regrettably.

It has been said that in America sex is an obsession, while in Europe it is a fact. If the characters in Sang-Soo Hong's Woman on the Beach are representative, it is also an obsession in Korea.

In the film, the male lead, film director Jung-Rae Kim, has affairs with two women, Moon-Sook and Sun-Hee, during a spring weekend at a seafront resort. Late in the film, when the two women meet for lunch, they ask each other about their deepest fears. One says it is obsession; for the other it is betrayal. These two themes, embedded within the overriding question of whether life is truly better in the new affluent Korea, dominate the 2 hours and 7 minute version of the movie that was shown at the Philadelphia Film Festival.

According to IMDb the American version is only 1 hour and 40 minutes, and indeed, for American tastes, much could have been shortened. For example, the scene in which one of Moon-Sook sees Director Kim with the other woman, Sun-Hee, through the resort's picture window that overlooks the sea. She gets into her car parked beneath the window, starts the engine, and for an interminable minute, we watch the car sitting there with the engine running. Finally she turns off the engine and walks away. Powerful stuff? Well, not for this American moviegoer.

Indeed Director Hong beats the viewer over the head with symbolism to make sure no one misses his points. A white dog abandoned by the side of the road represents the betrayal that all the key players show toward one another. A bicyclist left choking on the dust of a passing car is just one reminder that the new Korea is not always better than the old. But when it comes to showing obsessions, Hong outdoes himself. In one scene, Director Kim draws a triangle on a napkin to graphically display the three images of his former wife's affair with a friend that obsess him. Only now he has something new to obsess over, for Moon-Sook admits she had two or three sexual encounters with foreigners when she lived in Germany. Were their dicks bigger than mine, he wonders. New dots on the napkin to obsess over! Ah, he must have new affairs to create new images in his mind so that he can replace the old triangles of obsession with new dots that create a more hopeful shape. Why doesn't he just see a therapist, we ask.

Hong is a talented director and the film gives Western audiences a feel for Korean obsessions and angsts. For that it's worth seeing, but after sitting through 127 minutes of beachfront betrayal and recriminations by people who are not really that likable—kind of the Korean equivalent of the self-obsessed New Yorkers in Squid and the Whale, I'm not quite ready to see Hong's earlier works, such as The Day a Pig Fell into the Well.