La femme qui s'est enfuie

HSS loves to come at it sideways. This movie opens in the morning to a batch of chooks, whose owner is going for a job interview, and neighbour Young-soon wishes her well. Is the interview successful? An evening CCTV shot is a clue.

But visiting Young-soon is Gam-hee, who tells us repeatedly she's "never apart" from her new husband, a translator. Except, it's his idea, not hers.

The two pals hold an absurdist lunch conversation about the nature of eating meat, while another Young-soon neighbour begs her to stop feeding the local cats. This meta-conversation bats back and forth. The cat steals the scene.

Gam-hee's next visitee Su-young is also interrupted by an annoying bloke, a self-important poet who can't get over a one-night stand. But once again the two pals converse a little too brightly about nothing in particular - clothes, art, the mountain, the neighbourhood, the mystery person who discounted the price on Su-young's apartment. We never quite find out why.

Gam-hee runs into a third pal, and apologises for some long-previous slight. We never find out what. This third pal just happens to be married to Gam-hee's ex, a famous, and famously windy, writer.

Can the writer be sincere, if he just keeps saying the same thing over and over? An obvious reference to HSS himself, with two dozen movies in two dozen years. Then Gam-hee herself works a brittle encounter with the ex himself.

Cerebral manoeuvres about art and artists, but this is a movie, which has to signify through visuals, not just dialogue. Inside 80 minutes, HSS largely pulls it off. He is one of a kind, and I wish his movies were easier to access.

If you find "Parasite" over the top, try HSS instead, for a different aspect of Korea's wonderful cinema.

Summary

A film that, with astonishing naturalness, based on the successive reunions of a woman with three friends, reflects how many times we must reconstruct the other based only on what he tells us about himself, how many times we are just what we formulate and we reveal about ourselves through our discourse, how many times we are our story.

Review:

Taking advantage of a business trip from her husband, Gam-hee (Kim Min-hee) goes out to visit some friends whom she has not seen for a long time.

Apparently it sounds small: basically Hong San-soo's film (Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival) is made up of Gam-hee's three conversations with her friends. The question is everything that is at stake there and in what way.

In the first place, the incredible feeling of naturalness and even lightness that these reunions convey, filmed in long still shots nuanced with some zooms and other resources. Who are those women? What is its history? What do they propose? What is the link between them? We will learn about some things, but never as a grandiose or transcendent revelation and always under the sign of cordiality and a generally relaxed atmosphere. Other issues will remain in an interesting and suggestive out of the field such as stories taken up in media res. But this narrative distension will only be interrupted by the brief appearances of men on the scene as disruptive elements: they will be the ones who bring the uncomfortable moments, contrasting with the consensus of cordiality of the women. One of these interventions will acquire truly anthological humorous overtones.

It is also necessary to point out the relevance that the scenarios take, thanks to the framing and the dialogues. The feeling of immediacy, of being there, in those houses, is really palpable.

The woman who escapes is a film that with astonishing naturalness (hand in hand with the remarkable performances) reflects how many times we must reconstruct the other based only on what he tells us about himself, how many times we are just what we formulate and reveal of us through our discourse, in a story that from time to time even leads us to question everything we hear.

I remember once generalising that any film that takes three hours to tell its story can't really be that good. Of course, such generalisations are rubbish; films are as good or as bad as they are whether they are ten minutes long or ten hours but there's something to be said for 'the miniature'. Little films can be beautifully polished gems and there are many small films of seventy-five minutes or so that you wish would go on forever.

Sang-soo Hong's "The Woman who Ran" is one such film. It's a conversation piece and there's a lot of small talk but it's so beautifully directed and acted you feel a sense of privilege just being with these people and these people are mostly female friends, or maybe just acquaintances, spending time together. When a man makes an early appearance, in a terrifically written and very funny single take sequence, he seems something of an intruder but Hong has so much fun with the scene he makes for a very welcome intruder. Mostly, however, it's just women talking about their lives, the men in their lives, their pasts and the pleasure or otherwise of eating meat and I wish it could have gone on for another hour or so.

This is a comfort movie. The older you get, the more sensible you become. It is funny looking back into the past when we meet the familiar faces. Friendships, aquaintances, love, marriage, divorce, separation, loneliness, happiness, sadness, betrayals, and all other things together patched up. Sometimes we do need the closure even if it doesnt bothers so much. Remember everything that we worry about now wont even be an issue few years down the line.

House visits, shared meals and dialogue, are themes that this movie is based on. It is a simple movie, with unique details, and yet with no so simple theme. It is a story of a young woman trying to find her own path, trying to define herself. She visits her friends and, maybe to keep it safe, tells the same suspiciously repetitive story of her life to each of them. She tries not to stray too far away from the society, however we know that she already did.

I really liked the finishing of scenes with zooming in on characters´faces, including a stray cat. Just a little touch to give the viewer even more intimate perspective, beyond the dialogue we hear. It seems to be an inaudible comment saying: which version of "I" are we: the one that we present to others, or the private one, known only by ourselves?

It is a good, simple, yet not boring movie. To me, it lacked a bit of surprise or complexity of plot for a higher score.

PS Korean fashion is really aesthetically pleasing.