Un jour avec, un jour sans

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.

For the last few months, I'd read about Hong Sang-soo and his movies, and they sounded very appealing. There was a lot of hearsay about his body of work that drew me to him: His movies have a slice-of-life feel to them, his shooting style is minimalist, his annual output is two or three movies a year, and his movies are on some level closely tied to his life experiences. I have a huge affinity for these qualities at the present, so I knew sooner or later I had to watch his movies.

Watching this has instantly made me a fan. There is much to love about it: Chance encounters, cigarette smoking, drunken hangouts; cringey but moving outpourings of feelings; mutual and one-sided instances of platonic and romantic connectivity; naturalistic acting, long takes, zooms; and to top it all off, a story that gets told twice with glaring and subtle differences in the second telling. Really great stuff. It's everything I want in a movie.

But what I really appreciate is the vulnerability and openness this movie presents. It presents being honest as important and it shows how in a gentle way.

The bar scene in the second half was just wonderful.

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.

Going into this movie knowing nothing but the summary I was filled with high hopes, wondering what route the movie was going to take, or how it would tackle the much used topic of "love" and "loneliness". Such hope, unfortunately, soon fell short and turned into disappointment.

"Right Now, Wrong Then" poses a simple yet intriguing plot. A man meets a women out of chance, and they start talking. Having such a basic and linear story, the director goes to great lengths to subvert the narrative. The first half, constituting what can probably be described as a "realist" perspective on chance encounters between strangers, end up with disillusionment and leaves the audience with a feeling of lingering loneliness all around. The main characters start alone, and they end alone. The second half is akin to a "hopeful" or "illusioning" twist in the story. All the events are the same, except for how the main characters act, with their qualities being more transparent, honest, and virtuous. In the same way that the movie finishes "lost" in the snowfall, so do we as spectators end wondering which of the halves corresponded to the "truth".

In all these respects the movie poses an interesting twist to traditional love stories. However, upon finishing, I was left feeling as though the potential was lost. Albeit naturally awkward, some of the interactions between the main characters feel out of place and purposefully dragged to fill up time. A stark example of this is how in both halves of the movie, the director almost forces Yoon Hee-jeong to go for a coffee. Sure, it could be argue his attitude is explained by his yearning for companionship, however, in my opinion, it showed him as essentially instrumentalizing others for his own ends, making it difficult to relate.

All in all, Hong Sang-soo delivers an entertaining and promising movie, albeit without reaching its full potential.