By the Stream (Suyoocheon)

 

Writer/director Hong Sang-soo

Kim Min-hee with the director

The director shooting on location

BY THE STREAM (Suyoocheon)     B                                                                                     South Korea  (111 mi)  2024  d: Hong Sang-soo

Are you a commie?                                                                                                                       —Professor Jeong (Cho Yun-hee)

Proving that he’s something of a one-man band, Hong Sang-soo writes, directs, films, edits, produces, and composes the few frames of music for this film, all but confirming that perhaps as much as he is a filmmaker, Hong Sang-soo is also a prolific playwright, creating a cinema that constantly relies on the power of conversation, like variations on similar themes, often linked to each other in near subliminal fashion, becoming theatrical compositions of his own internal expression.  An astonishingly prolific filmmaker, with forty film credits since the late 90’s, his films are largely inaccessible, with no screening or streaming options available to most persons, seemingly existing in their own universe, yet he’s an extremely conscientious artist, working with such regularity, churning out a variety of small-scale chamber dramas that are immediately recognizable, yet despite the similarities, somehow each new film is a revelation, like new chapters of an infinite novel, as he’s exploring territory that no one else working anywhere in the world today is making films about.  Told in a barebones, naturalistic style, ignored by the commercial masses, where you wouldn’t think any of this would matter to an ever-changing world that spits out such grandiose mega-hits designed for the Cineplex, apparently to take our minds off of the cruel realities that exist all around us, yet somehow Hong Sang-soo finds a way to articulate the small details that continue to matter, like opening up cracks in our existence.  For the last four years, Hong has presented two films each year at major film festivals, registering somewhere between comedy and tragedy, exploring themes of infidelity, artistic aspirations, and communication breakdowns, this latest film reunites Hong with actress Kim Min-hee for their fifteenth film together, while this is the eleventh film working with actor Kwon Hae-hyo.  These familiar faces provide a level of comfort in Hong films, like a reunion of old friends, as if we know what to expect, where they provide a sense of reassurance to viewers with their intelligence, curiosity, and emotional restraint.  Hong typically avoids heavy planning and pre-production, scouting locations just a week or so ahead of time, preferring to withhold handing his actors a full script, instead writing the dialogue for each day’s shoot in the morning, allowing his actors only an hour or so before shooting begins, freeing up his actors to make more spontaneous choices in the moment, using an editing process that rarely takes more than a day, where Hong’s directional style relies upon authenticity and observation, accentuated by his use of long single takes, where this film, notable for its autumnal color, may have the shortest end-credits in memory. 

Like all of Hong’s works, the film is stripped of all artifice and is largely character-driven, where the performances are always elevated, as the director is never afraid to examine the small, often overlooked details of daily living, like hidden detours along the way, where he finds a way to delve into the complexities of life through loneliness, isolation, and fleeting connections.  Finding inspiration in nature, the reclusive Jeon-im (Kim Min-hee), an arts professor at Duksung University, a small private women’s college in Seoul, spends her free time on the banks of a local stream of the Han River sketching the changing patterns in her notebook, as she captures the changing colors of a pastoral autumn landscape of a stream running toward a bridge, and then weaves those patterns into tapestries on her loom later, creating larger works of art.  When she’s not creating her own textile art, she’s teaching a small group of performance art students, where the sleepy rhythms of this university campus are rocked by the startling revelations of a budding sex scandal, as a male student director from another university has been accused of an abuse of power by sleeping with three of the seven actors (who all dropped out simultaneously) just ten days before a play is scheduled to be performed at the university’s annual skit contest, leaving them in emergency mode trying to find a replacement director.  Desperate to find a solution, Jeon-im turns to her Uncle Chu Si-eon (Kwon Hae-hyo) to step in, a bookstore owner leading a quiet yet comfortable life by the sea, a man she hasn’t spoken to in ten years, but he was also a widely celebrated stage actor and theater director, hoping he can write a new script and finish directing the project.  Much to her surprise, he accepts the challenge, bringing him into the fold, where he arrives with ideas already in mind, hoping to provide the last-minute saving grace.  Jeon-im’s boss, Professor Jeong (Cho Yun-hee), has been extremely supportive and is largely responsible for securing her position at the university, yet she’s also intrigued by the presence of Chu, as she followed his career on television and in the theater, and has always wondered what happened to him, as he simply disappeared from having any public presence.  As it turns out, Chu’s bookstore is largely an excuse for him to appear busy when, in reality, there are very few customers who frequent the store, so the idea of resuscitating his creative juices is like a needed jolt of adrenaline.  The academic setting is a return to the director’s early films, where he was such a subtle and distinctly original force in the industry, making quiet, low-budget cinema, often featuring the inappropriate actions of brooding, self-absorbed men who tend to drown their sorrows in alcohol, social awkwardness, and meaningless sex, shining a light on human fallibility and the everyday idiosyncrasies of personal relationships.      

While there’s plenty of eating and drinking, always the centerpiece of Hong’s dramas, as these interactions drive the central questions of the film, where pauses for smoking cigarettes overlooking a picturesque stream offer Zen moments of melancholic reflection, perhaps the biggest surprise is Jeong’s infatuation and sudden interest in Chu, which is a startling development, especially as it leads to a romantic affair, with Jeon-im utterly dismayed at watching it blossom before her eyes, discovering her uncle is not the man she believed him to be.  Autobiographical elements are interspersed throughout, with Chu, a stand-in for the director, acknowledging at one point that he’s no longer with his wife of many years, that she finally agreed to a divorce after a decade of separation (Hong’s own wife refuses to divorce him so that he could marry Kim, where the scandalous public revelation of their affair all but killed Kim’s career outside of Hong’s work), and that he hasn’t spoken to his own sister (Jeon-im’s mother) since she accused him of being a “commie,” so this new romance is like a fresh start in life, but it leaves Jeon-im more than a little perplexed at finding herself in such a precarious position, relying upon her uncle not to spoil the good thing she has going at this university.  Making matters worse, she runs into the guy she fired (Ha Seong-guk), only to learn he hasn’t left the university grounds and shows no remorse for his actions, believing he did nothing wrong, but his presence alone is like a stalker in their midst, adding a creepy element that lies under the surface at an otherwise safe haven.  Where it all leads is to an understated dramatic skit that includes the women eating the last of their dwindling ramen supply, vowing to conserve their goods in a nod to socialism, overshadowed by a blaring industrial roar, which is poorly received while also creating some controversy, where this snippet of a live performance is not like anything in Hong’s films that we’ve seen before.  Celebrating with his cast afterwards in a restaurant, apparently fascinated by this youth generation, Chu asks “What kind of person do you want to be?,” turning into a somewhat improvised poetry session performed by the students speaking their inner thoughts, voicing their hopes and fears about the future, which are tinged in sadness, as they’re not particularly optimistic, while remaining very ambiguous about what the skit is actually about, yet the four women (Kang So-yi, Park Han-bit-na-ra, Oh Yoon-soo, and Park Mi-so) are like a Greek chorus standing in unison against an established male patriarchy, as the disgraced director’s actions mirror an incident in Chu’s youth where his shameful treatment of a female student at this same school still haunts him to this day.  We also learn that Chu made some rude comments about a famous actor he worked with that got him blacklisted from the business, and that 40 years ago he staged a radical theater piece at this same university that caused a scandal, perhaps an allusion to Kwon’s offscreen leftist activism ([Feature] An actor turned activist, later in life).  The unspoken theme is that art requires taking risks, potentially alienating one’s audience, as Hong is an artist who has faced his own public condemnation for his extramarital affair with Kim, and is viewed as a fiercely independent, minimalist artist standing outside traditional avenues, where the haiku-like simplicity of his work is something many critics just don’t get.         

In Front of Your Face (Dangsin-eolgul-apeseo)

 

Director Hong Sang-soo at Berlin Film Festival 2022

The director with his actresses

Lee Hye-young

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE (Dangsin-eolgul-apeseo)                   A-                                 South Korea  (85 mi)  2021  d: Hong Sang-soo

Everything I see before me is grace.  There is no tomorrow.  No yesterday, no tomorrow.  But this moment right now is paradise.  It can be paradise.            —Sang-ok (Lee Hye-young)

Written, directed, produced, and edited, while also filmed and music written by Hong Sang-soo, a real one-man band in South Korean independent films, where he’s been the only one doing it now for decades.  The first time since 2017, and really there’s only been one film since the 2015 release of 2016 Top Ten List #8 Right Now, Wrong Then (Ji-geum-eun-mat-go-geu-ddae-neun-teul-li-da) where he picks an actress other than Kim Min-hee (listed as a production manager and still photographer) to play the central character, choosing 80’s and 90’s star Lee Hye-young, more recently appearing in popular television series, and daughter of Lee Man-hee (Director Lee Man-hee: His Life and Movies), a legendary director who symbolizes Korean films in the 60’s and 70’s.  Shot during the Covid pandemic with a skeleton crew, the film consists of only 32 shots in just 85-minutes for an average shot length of 2 minutes and 39 seconds, which is unusually high, as the average film in 2021 consists of over 2,000 shots and an average shot length of less than 3 seconds.  While this may not be too surprising for anyone familiar with this director’s films, it does suggest there is more of a contemplative aspect in his more recent output, yet this film introduces many new twists, making extensive use of voiceover with one of the characters, as if speaking to God, like offering reverent prayers, where a spiritual and possibly even religious aspect slips in, but more importantly, this film deals with questions of religion and mortality in new and direct ways, themes touched upon in Hotel by the River (Gangbyeon Hotel) (2018), yet eliciting a different kind of response from viewers, while music also plays a more prominent role, heard throughout, though stripped down, not really a musical soundtrack, but it’s a poetic counterpoint to the narrative, offering a tonal presence, yet never intruding.  Hong Sang-soo has been making films since the mid-90’s, nearly always one or two per year, almost always screening in New York at film festivals, while the rest of the country may be sadly neglected, as his films have no commercial prospects, instead falling into the art film category, making this the 11th film chosen for the Cannes Film Festival, and his 26th film in 25-years.  According to koreanscreen.com poll, a listing of 158 film critics from 28 countries, twelve of his films make the list of the 100 greatest Korean films.  If you have been fortunate to see them, they play out in miniature, like haiku poems, exhibiting a minimalist style, often writing new scenes each morning and shooting later that same day, shooting and editing very quickly, using a conversational style, and almost always featuring an extended table scene over a meal, where alcohol comes into play, normally associated with a fictitious film director that may or may not reflect the author himself.  His early films were not afraid to screen graphic sex scenes, usually awkward moments without a trace of artifice, where the male characters exhibit a profound moral weakness, with the director having an obsession with exposing male vanity, usually featuring overly intellectual, morally ambiguous men, often mocking the hypocritical aspects of their character, not who they appear to be, in some ways frauds and con artists.  No one else offered such scathing portraits of male hypocrisy and pretentiousness, often becoming comical misadventures, while also exploring a multitude of ordinary, everyday moments throughout the course of his career.  More recently he has preferred to focus on female subjects, with Kim Min-hee, his star protagonist, as the centerpiece of his uniquely designed short stories, where men typically have a patriarchal, professorial quality, almost always outshined by the women.  This film is no different, with a deceptively complex narrative structure, resembling The Woman Who Ran (Domangchin yeoja) (2020), yet introducing audiences to a new female protagonist, older, more mature, with her own beguiling charm, where a mysterious voiceover offers an existential dialogue that initially feels strange, perhaps out of character, yet by the end, there’s a special fascination with this process, illuminating ideas in a unique way, offering a mysterious twist near the end.  Each of the conversations are open to interpretation, offering plenty of open space between the protagonist and everyone else, with her mind apparently drifting off into this mystical inner realm, reflecting an emotional remove, keeping her distance, even from viewers, yet she continually reveals small revelations in a film full of surprises while also exploring a deeper emotional terrain, making playful and vibrant use of color, remaining one of the director’s most evocative and spiritual works in recent years.

This is a film about Sang-ok (Lee Hye-young), in nearly every shot of the film, yet like Isabelle Huppert in earlier films, In Another Country (Da-reun na-ra-e-seo) (2012) or Claire's Camera (La caméra de Claire) (2017), she’s like a stranger in a strange land.  A former star actress in South Korea, she’s been living in America for five years, returning to visit her sister and nephew, where the landscape has changed dramatically, with narrative clues unveiled through various conversations.  In the opening and closing shot, like bookends, Sang-ok is sleeping on the couch in her sister’s high-rise apartment, already awake in the morning, while her sister, Jeong-ok (Cho Yun-hee), is still sleeping, attempting to rouse her ever so gently by simply touching her fingers, but she lingers asleep awhile.  Brief philosophical ruminations are heard through voiceover that sound like self-help mantras, spoken in a near whisper, offering positive encouragement, like everything around her is beautiful, describing things as God’s blessings, believing that heaven is hidden in front of our faces, where the excruciating mystery in life is discovering the joy in living, forcing herself to live in the present, embracing the moment, suggesting clarity and enlightenment are all around us, challenging our capacity to see, yet in our hurried pace of living, we tend to walk right past these moments, blind to the beauty.  But there’s nothing preachy about this, feeling more philosophical than religious, perhaps sharing a similar melancholic mood as Kiarostami’s THE TASTE OF CHERRY (1997), but not as heavy or mournful, feeling much more lighthearted, where the stellar performance of Lee Hye-young is simply exquisite.  Once awake, Jeong-ok mentions she was having a wonderful dream, but claims it’s unlucky to talk about it before noon, so she withholds the details, instead deciding to go out for a breakfast of coffee and toast, picking an outdoor café alongside a picturesque riverside location, made all the more beautiful by the radiant sunshine, where it would be hard to imagine a more idyllic setting, yet as they discuss their lives, Jeong-ok is surprised by the visit, discovering much that she didn’t know, including her own internal resentment for leaving, all of which erupts, realizing “There’s so much we don’t know about each other.”  That may as well be the opening premise of the film, suggesting there are so many empty spaces to fill, which the film slowly explores in a meandering pace, bit by bit, adding layers of texture and new revelations, usually through banal conversations, always discovering just a little bit more about Sang-ok, who seems to want to re-assess and re-examine her life, almost as if starting anew from a fresh perspective, having left for America with some “guy she barely knew,” with little to show for it, having no savings, and perhaps some regrets that she’s not forthcoming about.  While she may have had a recent religious epiphany, there are no real religious overtones in her thoughts, though there is a prayerful reverence in appreciating the moment, expressed with tenderness, even as the two sisters reflect upon their pasts and chat about their busy lives.  Wandering through some side streets, they stroll through a park filled with beautiful flowers, wanting a picture, so they ask someone walking past (Hong regular Seo Young-hwa), who remembers seeing Sang-ok on television, offering nothing but kind words and praise.  Jeong-ok is a bit surprised, as it’s been years, mostly decades, wondering how they still recognized her, as she looks different.  Similarly, Sang-ok is surprised by Seoul’s rapid development, barely recognizing it anymore, discovering a small snack shop run by her nephew, but he’s out on an errand delivering food, deciding to have soup, spilling a bit on her blouse, deciding to let it go, as appearances no longer matter that much to her.  Running into her nephew Seungwon (Shin Seok-ho) on their way out, he greets her with a formal affection, offering her a present, a small token of his appreciation, suggesting that even though she’s been away for years, she’s still had an impact on people’s lives.    

Taking a cab for a late lunch with a film director, she receives a phone message that plans have been changed to a new time and location, leaving her an opportunity to explore a different neighborhood, wandering into an outdoor patio overrun by foliage, as it soon becomes clear this is her childhood home, where this wall of greenery was her favorite spot.  The new owners pleasantly welcome her, opening their home to her, where she embraces an innocent young girl, who could well be an iteration of herself, offering a familiarity to much that has been forgotten, seeing it as if for the first time with a new set of eyes, showing a deep appreciation for how much it means to her, yet for the most part she inexplicably remains aloof and distant, feeling alienated, like an outsider.  When she meets the director, Jaewon (Kwon Hae-hyo), it’s under mysterious circumstances, as it’s a bar cleverly named “Novel,” the same bar appearing earlier in The Day He Arrives (Book chon bang hyang) (2011), which is not a restaurant, and is closed, yet he has a key, as it’s owned by a friend who happens to be away.  He has an assistant go across the street to a restaurant and order food and drink, while the next shot reveals plenty of time has passed, with food and empty bottles left on the table, having emptied several already, as she inquires why he sent the assistant away.  While he mumbles something about having other tasks to attend to, she distinctly recalls he ordered him to leave.  Somewhat clouded by this murky revelation, Jaewon proceeds to make his case why he wants to work with this actress in making a film together, recalling how affected he was by an early scene when he attended film school, how much emotion she conveyed sitting on a bench in the desolation of winter, evoking a kind of nostalgic memory.  While clearly touched by the detail of his recollections, she reminds him that was ages ago and she’s not so young and beautiful anymore, and that she hasn’t acted in years, yet he persists in his intentions, not swayed in the least, expressing a singleminded purpose, as if his mind was made up even before the meeting.  She exudes more reticence, yet also reveals more to this stranger than she ever revealed to her own family, like recalling a harrowing moment in her youth when she wanted to commit suicide as a teenager, when at the moment of truth, she suddenly realized the faces around her “looked so beautiful,” explaining “I felt in my heart what reality was,” a transcendent experience that made her recognize the immediacy of each moment, mostly shot in a long, uninterrupted 12-minute take, yet the two still remain on different tangents, as he’s clearly not listening to anything she’s actually saying.  Sang-ok often laughs during uncomfortable pauses, like a delayed reaction, where the rhythm of this conversation has a strange flow about it, where her obvious discomfort is clearly not his concern, though he’s always polite in what he has to say, continuing to pour each other more drinks, apparently his typical pattern of behavior in getting what he wants, attempting to wear down her defenses, yet she’s on to him, getting him to acknowledge that he’d like to sleep with her, even though he’s married, which is a strange turn in the conversation, as they were discussing at length making a film together, and suddenly it veers into sex.  The film industry has come under acute examination in its ways and practices since the boorish behavioral revelations of Harvey Weinstein, a mega-Hollywood producer who is now a convicted sex offender.  Korea is on the other side of the ocean, yet the male predatory practices sound remarkably the same, though the audience is probably more attuned to this than Sang-ok, who has likely seen it before and is unphazed.  The spill on her blouse is more metaphoric now, having no significance at all, as the much larger blemish is sitting across from her.  While the conversation meanders, the director insists upon making a film together, even if it’s a short film, suggesting they could take a trip to Kangwon Province, a mountainous region with spectacular scenery, somehow convincing her to agree, suggesting they could leave as early as the next morning, which comes as a surprise, as she’s done nothing but defer every offer, offering her reasons while remaining elusive and evasively out of reach, yet both touchingly share a cigarette in the pouring rain afterwards, huddled under an umbrella in a narrow alleyway.  The next morning she is awakened by a voicemail message that sends her into uproarious laughter, as after all that effort, it was the director who backed out.  In hindsight, the entire conversation was likely a carefully constructed alcoholic male fantasy that left her extremely wary of his stated intentions, showing deeper concerns, unveiling another eye-opening revelation that shatters our perspective of her inner dialogue, like a spiritual awakening.  Plot is completely secondary to mood in the film, becoming an internalized odyssey of a woman whose life is being re-examined in her later years, more circumspect, concealing that she’s primarily come back to experience the feelings of home and artistic expression that once defined her life as a young actress.