In Water (Mul-an-e-seo)

 

Writer/director Hong Sang-soo

principal cast

IN WATER (Mul-an-e-seo)                B                                                                                   South Korea  (61 mo)  2023  d: Hong Sang-soo

Do you know the man from a faraway land who swam out to sea?

He’s a man who’s never properly known love.

Rather than see his beautiful heart go bad from being lonely so long…

Do you know such a man who swam far out to sea?

—song at the end written by filmmaker Seong-mo (Shin Seok-ho)

For the past three decades, Hong Sang-Soo has carved out his own unique corner of the world cinema landscape, making films that only he could make, usually consisting of minimalist portraits of artists, film directors, actors, painters, novelists, and poets navigating the relationships between their personal lives and their art, generating curiosities due to a particular type of cinema that has not yet been fully understood or embraced by viewing audiences, despite academic essays and texts at festivals.  His style, characterized by the use of a static camera and frequent zoom shots, shootings at specific environments, or a focus on the realism of everyday life, is expressed through the naturalism of conversational dialogue, frequently associated with ritualized scenes of drinking and eating, as well as awkward misunderstandings.  However, each film must be absorbed as a singular experience, part of a regular pattern in his works, where artists are going through a creative or moral crisis, developing ideas surrounding the experience of artistic invention.  A character in the previous film, WALK UP (2022), dreamed of shooting a film on Jeju Island, Korea’s southernmost territory, and a frequent vacation destination, so it’s only appropriate that’s where we find ourselves for this film, one of the few in the entire Hong output that features only young people.  And while it’s short, only 61 minutes in length, it’s also intentionally shot out of focus, much like the intentionally blurry art from Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf (2025), which alters how we view what we see onscreen, perhaps a reflection of Hong’s deteriorating eyesight over the years, but more likely a still-in-development, youthful mindset of a coming-of-age film that resembles a water color painting.  The movie was made with little money, shot in just six days and edited in one, as a trio of friends wanders to the rocky shores of the windswept island to shoot a short film together, summoned by the director, Seong-mo (Shin Seok-ho), who recently gave up acting to become a film director, financing it himself for only $3000, renting a vacation home for a week, accompanied by his former university classmate Sang-guk (Ha Seong-guk) as the cameraman, who has a more extensive background in filmmaking, and actress Nam-hee (Kim Seung-yun).  Still an inexperienced, self-questioning artist, Seong-mo is ambivalent about his plans, with only a rough idea in his head of what he wants to do, as he doesn’t want to write a screenplay in advance, preferring to wait for inspiration to strike and then create the film almost spontaneously, a minimalist style that resembles the director’s own.  Hoping to find a connection with the landscape, as all around them is a striking amount of beauty, they take walks and scout locations, with exquisitely composed vignettes of the coast, seen discussing various ideas, while devouring local take-out food.  There is no real conflict between them, but Seong-mo seems to be more isolated and distant, in a world by himself, while the other two grow friendlier as time goes on. 

A tale of three friends who wander around a quaint seaside village and otherwise do absolutely nothing, opening with gentle guitar strums with shots of the sea, these musical riffs are heard throughout the film at various interludes, in water (2023) OST — Hong Sang-soo YouTube (1:19).  And while the outside shots are out of focus, with the cast admitting they didn’t know the film would be out of focus until they saw the completed film in theaters, the inside shots of the three of them eating are mostly in focus, showing a noticeable contrast in mood and texture, exposing the blurred boundaries between art and life.  When they go for a walk, they discover an alleyway composed of stone walls and ponder the ways they can make use of its curvature for maximum emotional effect, wondering whether it could be used as a location, lending a certain mystique to the island, which they amusingly describe as an “isle of rocks.”  As they eat sandwiches overlooking the sea, they question what kind of film Seong-mo wants to make, and while he’s ambiguous about details, he dreams of making an original film instead of copying others, where he wants the setting to dictate what he films, drawing from the everyday life and reality around them.  While his partners are a little apprehensive at working without a script, they are nonetheless aligned with his thinking that it needs to be original.  Back at the house, Seong-mo steps outside to view the plentiful fish in a nearby stream, seemingly existing in perfect harmony with nature.  As they discuss how they will spend their day, Nam-hee mentions she was awake in the middle of the night when she heard a screaming voice call out, “Snap out of it!”  Shocked at what she heard, unable to identify the source, she felt it was a ghost condemning her for her sins, followed by a heavy dose of guilt, something inexplicable still weighing on her conscience the next morning.  Like some kind of foreshadowing warning sign, the three of them plod ahead on their project, with Seong-mo indicating the story is so simple there is no need to write anything.  They walk to a cliff overlooking the beach and the sea beyond, occasionally seen wearing masks, where the landscape is spectacular as Seong-mo decides to climb down the rocks and politely inquires why a woman is cleaning up the beach on her own.  Claiming she lives nearby, with tourists continually leaving refuse everywhere, she is selflessly dedicating her life to cleaning up after them.  Simple as it is, this becomes part of a story he was searching for.  Easily Hong’s most experimental work, an impressionist tableaux of the tangled relationships between art and life, hinting at mysterious realms lurking below the surface of everyday reality, this is one of Hong’s darkest films, along with Hotel by the River (Gangbyeon Hotel) (2018) and In Front of Your Face (Dangsin-eolgul-apeseo) (2021), which may be a kind of director’s manifesto, a statement on why his own films deviate so substantially from the mainstream, often overlooked by Korean audiences, and difficult to find around the world except at film festivals.   

As they set the tripod up for the shoot, Seong-mo describes what he wants to film, which is clear enough to them, adding a little personal touch that he wants to add a song he composed for a former girlfriend on her birthday, gaining permission from her (Kim Min-hee) to use in the film, as he has it stored on his phone, which he can add to the recording function as they are filming.  What stands out is the ambiguous circumstances of the shoot, the frustrating psychology, while also tapping into the unknown realms of a creative artist, where it’s more about his inner self than anything else.  As much as any film he’s ever made, this reveals the blueprint for how Hong makes films, where his job is to make what’s unclear clear, or to make the inaccessible accessible.  In this way, the unusual circumstances mirror the simplicity of Hong’s creative process with each and every film, where you never know what you’re going to discover, or how it will evolve, but the journey of the artist is the most important thing, as essentially his films are about how he himself makes movies in his own peculiar way.  Scenes of drinking and talking are the true essence of a Hong Sang-soo film, as true feelings and social façades intersect, revealing the complex psychology of the characters.  “Why does life have to be so hard?” the young director asks towards the end.  A film about a young filmmaker struggling through his creative process, where the lack of focus may symbolize just how unclear the creative process can be, as there is no conventional cause-and-effect shape of the narrative, and no action sequences that follow a traditional dramatic pattern, Hong instead sketches the vague contours of a love triangle, with the implication that the overly reserved Seong-mo has planned the film shoot largely as a means of getting closer to Nam-hee, who remains polite but guarded around him.  As Seong-mo becomes increasingly consumed by his creative process, Nam-hee and Sang-guk, who are left alone with nothing to do, spark a connection.  All of this remains under the surface, however, as no character makes an open romantic gesture toward another.  Literally blurring the boundary between reality and fiction, the stunning finale is mystifying to experience, with references to Edward Yang’s That Day, On the Beach (Hai tan de yi tian) (1983), and even Niki Caro's WHALE RIDER (2002), as it’s profoundly introspective and deeply affecting, unlike anything else Hong has ever done, becoming imprinted in the deep recesses of our subconscious.  Hong does not ask the viewer to evaluate the value of the final images produced by Seoung-mo (we never see his film) so much as he invites us to reflect on the methods through which he crafts his vision, concluding with a haunting final shot accompanied by the unseen voice of Kim Min-hee (who also plays the masked woman cleaning up on the beach) singing the sad song that the filmmaker wrote, the same song we’ve heard bits and pieces of earlier, offering poetic undertones.  All we’re left with is the sound of the waves quietly lapping against the shore, with the brief end credits also appearing out of focus.