Oh! Soo-jung

Hong Sang-soo really is probably the greatest director almost no one has heard of, at least from Asia if not the whole world. That said, I'm not sure I like this one quite as much as his earlier "The Power of Kangwon Province", if only because it doesn't quite have the same sense of distinct urban anomie that I love. It might be an all-around more well-constructed film though, if borderline too strictly formalist. It's too bad these are the only two films of his available on DVD because otherwise I'd make watching all of them a priority. It's funny that the film has such a rigid sense of structuralism and yet is infused with such a real, intimate sense of humanism. The film is divided into two halves (each with eight chapters), showing roughly the same courtship between a man and a woman, first from what appears to be his perspective, and then from hers (although the specific point-of-view is never directly announced and it is possible they overlap somewhat). This sounds pretty gimmicky, and in a sense it skirts that line, but like I was saying it is presented in such a straight-forward, empathetic way that it barely seems cerebral or detached at all. It's really quite remarkable, i think, what a truly empathetic tone the film has. Although visually somewhat similar to the work of the great Tawainese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, the film has none of Hou's pronounced sense of detachment or aloofness. Instead it feels incredibly intimate and humane. Still, the rigid structural devise, if not quite gimmicky, does create a certain repetitiveness, since unlike "Rashomon" the two versions of events don't usually differ in very overt ways (although there are some differences). I wouldn't normally call the film slow (as minimalistic as the camera style is, it moves along fairly briskly), but the repetition does make it seem like it drags at times over the course of it's two hour length. Still, it's overall a pretty great film. Some of the most honest, heartfelt, no-frills relationship stuff I've ever seen in a film, actually. The last scene in particular is one of the nicest things I've seen in a while.

Here we follow an independent director with his writer and meet up with the rich sponsor of the movie, an owner of a gallery called "Growrich". The movie is split into two parts (which is not as gimmicky as it sounds) with 5 (?) chapters each, both with the same story told more or less the same way, from different angles. What angles are they? Some speculate the first to be the sponsors perspective and the second to be the female protagonists, which may very well be, what is certain however is that the differ in time, both are retrospects and the haziness of it all suggest quite some time has passed since the event.

This is the definite highlight of the Hong Sang soo filmography for me with "Power of Kangwon Province" as a good second. The strict formalism applied here gives an edge to the realism and thereby en-chances it which I felt were lacking in some of his other movies like "Woman is the Future of Man". That being said, I watched this two times over to really appreciate how he deconstructs from the different angles. This is the work of a true master.

Lee Eun-ju and the other actors did a wonderful job, cinema lost a big talent with her suicide 5 years after this movie. Rest in peace.

I really enjoy movies shot in black & white, because they don't divert the viewer's attention too much from what actually is going on. I felt the movie was rather slow, but nonetheless makes some interesting social commentaries on dating in Korea. Whether they are true or not... beats me. Someone said that they felt the movie shows 7 days of courtship from two points of view. I almost felt like this was the "Sliding Doors"-like alternative time lines, but I suppose either one would work. Either way, not a bad movie.

A VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS

One of the more colorful movie titles in history belongs to a film that was shot in black and white. However, the English title is a great deal more lurid than the original Korean title (¡°Oh! Soo-Jung!¡±), and is more suggestive of a 1960s Suzuki Seijun sex potboiler than a deliberately paced b/w art film. ¡°Virgin¡± IS ostensibly about the deflowering of a film director¡¯s young assistant, but in fact it¡¯s much more content to linger upon and play around with the little details that precede the big event. Soo-Jung¡¯s ¡°bachelors¡± are the down-and-out indie film director who she works for and the director¡¯s independently wealthy and seemingly none-too-bright drinking buddy. The central conceit of the film is that the same story (the wooing of Soo-Jung) is told twice (Hong likes to divide his films into interrelated halves), from different perspectives. Although whose perspective each segment is taken from is a little unclear (I assume that Part One is the rich guy¡¯s view and Part Two is Soo-Jung¡¯s, but that seems to create a couple of problems). The changes range from the minor to the quite grand (Soo-Jung is pawed on in a back alley by a different suitor in each half). What it all adds up to is a kind of cosmic game of chance. Two different sets of events build inexorably to the same result. Unlike Hong¡¯s other two recent films (I haven¡¯t seen ¡°The Day a Pig Fell in a Well¡±), the events of the first half of the film don¡¯t in any way dictate what happens in the second. But in ¡°Virgin¡± it is unclear what is truth and what is fiction, and I¡¯m not sure that any of the characters in the film can be trusted as far as they can be thrown. But what is real and what is imagined is not of primary importance. What is important is that the scheme allows for Hong to dwell on his favorite themes: chance disconnection, male/female relationships and what he seems to feel is the spiritual vacuity of modern Korea. Seems this vacuum doesn¡¯t just exist in Korea. Hong shares many of the same sympathies and stylistic traits with Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang and the Finn Aki Kaurismaki, i.e. a free-floating style that lacks what can be called a conventional plot, a dislike of excess cutting, muted acting, a predilection for silence and sparing use of soundtrack music, a subtle, dark sense of humor, and a rather bleak view of modern existence. Not to say that these filmmakers are the same, because each is certainly distinctive in his own way, but all three seem to fixate on a problem that is not endemic only to their particular locales (as firmly rooted in those locales as they all may be). Hong¡¯s films are neither entertaining nor reassuring, but for those who prefer substance to fireworks and cliche in their cinema, his works continue to reveal why he is among the best directors working today. It¡¯s a shame he isn¡¯t better known, either here in Korea or abroad.

Well, here's a Korean movie that even lovers of Godard (and Bergman, to a lesser extent) might love. Shot in radiant black-and-white (gorgeous), this film tells the story of a young woman Soo-jung (LEE Eun-Joo), "courted" by one acquaintance (and also pursued by her boss) in two equal parts -- first from the perspective (mostly) of the young woman's would-be lover, and then (from the top) from the woman's point of view (but again, mainly only mostly). Sometimes the matching scenes are almost identical, other times they are radically different. Most interesting, however, are the matches when only relatively small details are slightly differently remembered (?). This could be sterile and abstract (and some critics have complained), but I found it quite accessible and enjoyable. Our heroine's sensibilities seem a bit more robust (despite her virginal state) than those of either of her men -- and the "second time around" of the story often seems a bit more humorous. Due to my imperfect memory, several viewing will be required until I can pull all the pierces of this film together. Nonetheless, I'd say this is very much worth watching.