Shot in solemn black-and-white, Hong’s elegiac, non-linear reflection on infidelity, regret and emotional burden sees a condemned man trying to move on from his extramarital affair.
Continue reading →
Shot in solemn black-and-white, Hong’s elegiac, non-linear reflection on infidelity, regret and emotional burden sees a condemned man trying to move on from his extramarital affair.
A contemplative exploration of neediness and the transient nature of human connection, Hong’s drama about creative paralysis sees a film director having a fling with his friend’s girlfriend, sparking psychological clarity.
A married Korean man finds himself staying in Paris in Hong’s thought-provoking and layered work about the inherent affinities and contradictions of living a present life to one’s desire, as he gets caught up in an incompatible romance with a younger woman.
A filmmaking student doesn’t know herself except through the eyes of three men who have had an on-off intimate relationship with her, as Hong gives us a sly film bounded by the circularities and repetitions of plotting and dialogue.
Hong’s finest film in a while tackles work, life, art, love, past and future with effortless ease, as an art lecturer asks his famous but blacklisted uncle to help her students mount a skit.
Hong’s trademark stylistic minimalism and meditation on the meaning of art and life remain intact if nondescript, featuring two seemingly unrelated stories connected by a shared fondness for eating ramyeon with pepper paste.
Huppert returns in front of Hong’s camera for the third time in this largely breezy drama about ‘learning’, ‘feeling’ and ‘sipping’ as a French woman uses an unorthodox method to teach French to several Koreans in their encounters with music or poetry.
Intentionally shot out of focus, Hong’s impressionistic and ‘painterly’ new work about an actor-turned-director in search of an idea to shoot a short film doesn’t always work, but its meta-filmic final act is sublime.
Some may feel Hong’s doing something different here—it’s more self-introspective and structurally liminal, but also slower and more meandering than usual as a film director brings his daughter to visit an old friend who might offer her career advice.
A more melancholic piece than some of Hong’s breezier offerings as he explores fictive ideals and sad realities through the idea of cinema as a mirror image.