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.

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.

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.

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.

In the tradition of Asian philosophical and religious thought-where truth is prismatic and perspective fluid-Hong Sang-soo frames a conventional love triangle through a "Rashomon"-like lens. Like Kurosawa's seminal work, the film fractures into three subjective accounts of the same relationship, each revealing as much about the storyteller as the story itself.

The Western release title, "Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors", winks at Marcel Duchamp's "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" (1915-23)-another artist obsessed with multiplicity (see: "Nude Descending a Staircase", "Sad Young Man on a Train"). But where Duchamp reveled in erotic tension, Hong strips sexuality of its allure, rendering intimate scenes tragicomic, even absurd.

Soo-jung, the protagonist (her name means "crystal"-a motif of fragile transparency), is a screenwriter for public television, secretly pining for her director boss, Yeong-su. Enter Jae-hoon, a wealthy gallerist obsessed with her perceived virginity. Both men orbit her with escalating desperation, while Soo-jung remains less a victim than an arch observer of their follies.

Shot in stark black-and-white-Hong's first monochrome film since "Oh! Soo-jung!" (2000), followed only by "Geu-hu" 17 years later-the aesthetic nods to Antonioni's "Trilogy of Alienation". Here, the grayscale palette underscores the characters' emotional stasis, their miscommunications rendered as crisp and unforgiving as the frames that trap them.

A masterclass in tonal dissonance: Hong weaponizes deadpan humor to expose the void beneath romantic pursuit, where desire curdles into farce, and every gesture of connection only deepens the isolation.