Seule sur la plage la nuit

The Korean movie Bamui Haebyeoneseo Honja was shown in the U.S. with the translated title On the Beach at Night Alone (2017). It was written and directed by Sang-soo Hong.

Min-hee Kim stars as Young-hee, who was apparently a successful actor, but who now describes herself as box office poison. The reason for this is that she had an affair with a movie director, who is married.

The movie is divided into two parts. In the first part, Young-hee is visiting an older woman, who is her friend. Young-hee is waiting for her lover, who may or may not arrive. The last few frames of this part didn't make sense to me, so I don't know if he arrived or not.

In part two, Young-hee has arrived back in Korea after two years abroad. (Another reviewer says she was in Hamburg, Germany. I didn't see that in the subtitles--maybe the reviewer speaks Korean.)

What follows is an interminable hour of Young-Hee either walking on the beach (sometimes alone), sometimes with other people), but never at night.

Interspersed with her walks are conversations with friends during which Young-hee looks vacuous. Mostly they talk about each other. "You are beautiful." "Yes, but the script girl is beautiful too." The highlight of these conversations comes when a character asks Young-hee, "Are you still searching for love?" Her answer: "Where's love? It's not even visible. You need to see it in order to search for it."

Also, by the way, Young-hee is a mean drunk. Apparently that's OK, because she's a beautiful movie star.

Director Sang-soo Hong is an international darling of the film world, so his movies get shown at important festivals, and they get awards. This film was nominated for awards at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival. Min-Hee Kim won the Golden Bear award for her acting.

It's not a coincidence that she herself did, indeed, have an affair with Sang-soo Hong. So, art reflects live, or maybe vice-versa.

Fortunately, IMDb raters weren't impressed by the reputation of the director and star. The film has an anemic IMDb rating of 6.8. I didn't think it was even that good. I rated it a 5.

P.S. Normally, IMDb male raters outnumber female raters by two to one, or three to one. In this case it was five to one. My guess is that men went to see it because the title made them think it would be a sex film, a horror film, or both. For the record, it's neither.

I liked this film, surprisingly. The actress. The character played by the actress. Because nothing much happens I was surprised at how it held my attention. Basically, it is about a young actress getting over her affair with her director. The music helps in underlining the poetic quality of this work.

I knew nothing going into this, and perhaps that's why its sensitivity and its meticulous pacing really surprised and impressed me. Visually the film looks simple, yet it's very elegantly shot. The screenplay, in particular the intimate dialogue between characters, is fantastic. The biggest strength of the film is Min-hee Kim. She has such an ethereal quality to the way she performs, expressing the dialogue in such a natural, realistic way. The film isn't standard entertainment fare, but it sure is strong.

Hong Sang-soo's visually astounding piece of cinema has the potential to turn into a sleep-fest for many viewers who are not used to extended sequences of silence and a lingering, loitering focus of the cameras on sombre landscapes and city streets. But those who possess a keen eye for the subtle meaning of cinema will find in these visual depictions a gentle erosion of love and a growing, rebelling, unstable acceptance.

The film depicts a young actress in Young-hee (Kim Min-hee) as she meanders along parks and pathways of foreign cities, has coffee in countryside restaurants with old friends and desperately tries to find for herself a hotel out at sea where she could spend some time letting go of her erratic, volatile longing for a recent lover.

Sang-soo lets his landscapes blend in naturally and does not resort much to color grading thus making it very difficult for viewers to not connect with the journey and emotions of the protagonist. We can feel Young-hee's admiration of the quietude in her sombre, spiritual walks in the park and her excitement on beholding the frozen lake. We can experience her detachment and withdrawal to her friends' lives and words as her resonance with generally accepted notions of love gradually fades away. We can accompany her in her dreams as she sleeps carefree on the beach drowning herself in the gentle snore of the sea.

A profound movie that in itself is a dissection of the breakdown of love and attachment.

I have to start with the idea that this is definitely (not even close) to an easy-watch movie. There are a lot of large scenes that are basically just people having a conversation, this is not a movie for everyone.

But, if you´re looking for an introspecting kind of movie, this is the one. We have a bunch of idea of what is love about, if there are people "qualified" to love and all those kind of thoughts.

Is really interesting if you want to have a different perspective about a hard way to love or felling lonely, but sometimes the scene is so long that you lose interest.