Matins calmes à Séoul

Same guy, same place, same characters, but different combinations. Same day? Maybe. Is this the same day in different combinations, or different days that show how utterly repetitive life is? There is room for debate there. If you've ever kept a diary over a period of years, then gone back to read them, the most shocking thing that many people find is not how much they've changed, but how much they haven't. You make similar decisions and similar mistakes. The situations are always slightly different, with some minor variable, but the results end up in the same place. This film is an examination of that idea. It's may not be for popular tastes, but it's good stuff, reminiscent of Eric Rohmer and the French New Wave.

OK, so I get that this is a foreign film, and I get that I'm supposed to be super-sensitive to cultural differences. But, and a huge BUT here, I was bored beyond tears with this one.

I'm regretfully placed in an awkward position to witness the characters stutter their way through their seemingly contrived scripts, from the tedious profile angles that the director seems to prefer. I was witness to over the top and quite frankly, ridiculous responses to otherwise benign dialogue contrivances.

I really, really tried to give this flick a chance, but I just couldn't get into it. I'm no stranger to foreign films, and watch and enjoy a number of them. This one, however, bored the living fecal matter out of me.

This is me second Hong Sungsoo film. The first, Alone on the Beach At Night, was very good with an excellent performance by Kim Min-hee..

This is in similar territory. In real life Sungsoo had an affair with Min-hee, which became a tabloid scandal. He has apparently made several films set in and around the film world dealing with fictional variations of their story.

In The Day He Arrives, a former director returns to Soule to see an old friend and encounters a combination of former acquaintances, and new people, some of whom know him by reputation.

In very subtle ways events replay with variations. People seem unaware of previous conversations, encounters are slightly too dramatic and revealing, women react - more or less like they might be in a movie.

The movie never directly says that it's about constructing stories but there are hints. We see him writing, we hear him doing voice over that seems no more aware of other events than characters are. The overall sense is of the director character reworking his entangled life and trying to put it into a story.

Just as the real director. Hong Songsoo is doing in film after film. Highly recommend this moving, intelligent film

This genuinely weird Korean film seemed like a fusion of "Groundhog Day" and "No Exit" but in a style that married Eric Rohmer and Woody Allen. I don't really know if I liked it or not and kind of admire it for that. A Korean film-maker, who has forsaken the art world for a simple life as a rural school-teacher, returns to Seoul to reunite with friends. The first night is an enthralling experience of great, drunken conversation on the nature of chance and identity, with much drunken lust thrown in. Each following day becomes a less satisfying copy of the first. Time has stopped, and only the director seems (semi) conscious of it. I would interpret this work as a kind of confession. The director's development has been entrapped by his vanity even as he strives for a life of modesty. Whatever else, it captures Seoul, and drunken satisfaction- be it intellectual or amorous- very nicely.

"The Day He Arrives" is a South Korean film directed by Hong Sang-soo. Beautifully shot in black and white (Shouldn't EVERY film set in winter be shot in black and white?) this film is funny, sad, touching and just a bit insane. Hopping back and forth in time and alternate universes, you see the protagonist, a "well-known filmmaker" who hasn't done anything for a while, interact with old flames and new friends upon his arrival in Seoul. You will see these interactions from different perspectives, with different outcomes, but with the same people as different characters. Confusing? Not as much as my poor description would lead you to believe. Beneath all the trappings of comedy is the story of an artist who no longer creates art, and of a human being trying to rebuild burnt bridges. A small, short, but worthwhile trip to Korean Cinema.

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