Walk Up (Tab)

 

Writer/director Hong Sang-soo

WALK UP (Tab)        B                                                                                                           South Korea  (97 mo)  2022  d: Hong Sang-soo

A minimalist, architectural story from Hong Sang-soo, yet another example of just how unique and original an artist he is, a rejection of the norms that dictate what movies should be and how they get made, as this is a truly different kind of movie, modest in scope, even for him, yet emblematic of a “post-political” Korea.  In this case, the most prominent character is a building, comprised of four floors, each containing a different chapter of the story, focusing on its exploration of a film director's life through a four-story building in Seoul, where the film utilizes the vertical structure to explore relationships and shifting realities, with the changing floors evoking progressions in time, as the lives of four women intersect and weave together like parallel worlds, but is actually an infinite exploration towards the everyday, seen from a variety of prisms that connect in a terribly intimate way, either in the most emotional aspect or in the purely cinematic, where it’s hard to decipher just what’s going on here, as time advances unknowingly between episodes, making large, unexpected leaps in chronology, where much of what happens takes place offscreen, with viewers hard-pressed to comprehend what’s transpired in the unseen, empty spaces in between.  In fact, the only way to know we’re advancing to a new chapter is the guitar music interlude, or maybe it’s a mandolin, composed by the director himself, who once again writes, directs, edits, films, and produces this film, which is shot in high contrast black and white.  Celebrated for its signature minimalist style, painting a poetic and intimate portrait of the daily life of a building populated by artists, the film explores art, memory, and aging, with the passage of time becoming a significant aspect, as perspectives change over time.  Kwon Hae-hyo is acclaimed director Byung-soo, often seen as a stand-in for Hong himself, completely recognizable in his ninth film with the director, where the actor openly acknowledges his working method, “the key is not to prepare anything.”  He arrives with his estranged adult daughter Jeong-su (Park Mi-so), who is an aspiring interior decorator, at a building greeted by an old friend, who is the building owner, Ms. Kim (Lee Hye-young), but also well established in the designer field.  She gives them a tour of the property, which includes a restaurant and cooking studio on the first two floors, her office in the basement, a residence on the third floor, and an artist’s studio on the top filled with abstract paintings, which she generously offers to the director, as the current occupant, a painter, has run out of funds to pay rent.  They catch up over a bottle of wine, but Byung-soo leaves for an important meeting at his film office nearby, leaving Jeong-su alone with Ms. Kim to discuss her ambitions, which sound earnest enough, hoping to work as her apprentice, though it remains questionable whether she’s really serious enough, instead confessing thoughts about her filmmaking father, “He’s well known outside, but to me he’s completely different.  People have no idea.  People admire my dad because of his image as a film director.”  Ms. Kim perceptively responds, “We’re all different when we go out, we’re different inside and outside.  Maybe the person he is when he’s outside is more genuine.”

If, as Jeong-su suggests, you cannot get the whole picture of a person like her father merely from watching his films, then the same is likely to be true of Hong.  While his films are intimate, loosely autobiographical portraits of the director, they are also inevitably oblique, distorted, and incomplete, becoming more experimental of late, as the narrative advances with almost imperceptible variations, leaving viewers to make of it what they will, where there is always drunkenness and people who smoke excessively.  The second chapter takes place on the second floor where Byung-soo and Ms. Kim dine in the tiny restaurant with the cook, Sun-hee (Song Seon-mi), a former painter who admires his films, informing him, “There’s a lot of talking in your films, but the dialogue never rubs me the wrong way,” explaining further that she finds them laugh out loud funny, and easy to drink to, yet because they’re so talky, “They make me feel less lonely.”  Byung-soo sadly informs them that his new oversees project that he had been working on for the last year was just rejected by his investors three weeks before shooting was set to begin, claiming films spend so much money on needless things, that it’s all about the money to them instead of making the best film, as they will never understand true artistic vision, thinking it’s all such a waste, that it’s a business model destined to fail.  This failure is mirrored by Ms. Kim acknowledging that Jeong-su was hired as her apprentice, but she left suddenly without a word before the first month had passed, with reverberations spreading like waves, as now the father and daughter are no longer on speaking terms.  These incidents reveal the temporality of things, like the changing seasons, where our understanding of the things that matter to us require viewpoint shifts and quick adaptation.  The more they drink a more palpable attraction builds between Byung-soo and Sun-hee, exchanging mutual admiration, and they remain together in the third chapter, with Byung-soo moving in to the third floor with her, but by now he’s experiencing health issues, growing concerned about his diet, trying to eliminate meat and eat healthier.  Sun-hee cares for him and at first they seem happy together, but there are signs that something is not right.  The ceiling is leaking (like something out of Tsai Ming-liang), yet their landlord, Ms. Kim, doesn’t appear concerned.  While she once salivated at the opportunity of such an esteemed artist living in her building, but Byung-soo’s career has taken a nosedive, apparently affecting his health, and Ms. Kim now feels burdened by his presence, routinely entering without permission, or opening his mail, and only grows more pathetic over time.  What was once a charming space now feels oppressive and claustrophobic, with the world closing in.  As he scales the building, floor by floor, story by story, we see a director age and become unwell, curling up in bed in a fetal position, where a a voiceover incident takes place in his head that may take place in the future or may be pure fantasy, as Byung-soo now starts to think he’d be better off alone, dreaming of making films on Jeju Island.

Next time we see him, he is living in an artist’s studio on the rooftop floor upstairs with yet another woman, Ji-young, (Cho Yun-hee), an emotionally supportive and motherly real estate agent who brings meat to grill and soju to drink, while also getting wild ginseng root preserved in honey, valued for their medicinal properties, which she offers to heal whatever is ailing him.  They eat on the outdoor balcony with a view overlooking the city, a quality that initially attracted the director to choosing this building to live, as it definitely has an aesthetic quality that would be pleasing to any artist.  Byung-soo has aged significantly, though we have no idea how much time has passed.  There are several moments when viewers can’t tell if Byung-soo is dreaming or if it is real, as scenes are narrated as he sleeps, or a text is dictated in his head as it is being composed.  In a carry-over from the earlier chapter, the roof still leaks and the toilet does not work, creating a sizable problem, yet all that seems to matter to Ms. Kim is that he changed the password to his electric door entry keypad (a familiar sound we keep hearing), as she took such great pride that the previous tenant kept his door unlocked.  Using structure as a focal point, each new chapter adds a deeper, more personal layer to the multi-talented artist who oversees nearly every aspect of its production, with echoes of multiple meanings where people connect or not with one another, reflective of the director’s own understanding, his desire, his empathy, and his curiosity, which sometimes provokes anger, regret, and rejection.  Time and time again, Hong uses a certain familiarity with his stable of actors in combination with the film’s plot device to bring out deeper, underlying aspects of the story, with an absence of any explanation or character psychology.  Byung-soo is, after all, a film director, so the unearthed revelations about him, as conversations move toward discussions of fandom, legacy, image, perception, or craft, lead to indications or clues about Hong’s true feelings on the subjects.  This is true about all his films going back to the mid 90’s, where there is virtually no beginning and no end to the list of possible entry points into the auteur’s filmography, as it really doesn’t matter, as each can stand on its own, yet all his films exist in conversation with one another, where it helps to be well-versed in the Hong Sang-soo aesthetic to appreciate what this film is doing, as it retraces where he’s been and offers insight into where he’s heading.  It doesn’t have the quirky fun of another film that lets the imagination go wild in imagining what transpires in the room of a house, that becomes a writing exercise in François Ozon’s In the House (Dans La Maison) (2012), which is more brilliantly inventive, instead this is more subdued, elusive, and ambiguously hard to read, where it’s remarkable what you can do in a small space, though nothing of any real interest happens, filling the spaces with an outpouring of everyday details spanning art, love, career, religion, dietary decisions, and home renovations, but it represents a tender journey through different stages of the director’s life with an open-ended honesty that is uniquely this artist’s own. 

Oslo Trilogy: Love (Kjærlighet)

 

Writer/director Dag Johan Haugerud

OSLO TRILOGY: LOVE (Kjærlighet)         A-                                                                 Norway  (119 mi)  2024  d: Dag Johan Haugerud

At its core, the film is about how to do good.  I believe fiction plays a decisive role in imagining alternative worlds and perspectives.  It allows people to express themselves and act in ways that are often unusual.  For me, an important function of fiction is to inspire new ways of thinking in real life.     —Writer/director Dag Johan Haugerud

The chatty and stagy opening section of the Oslo Trilogy: Sex, which is largely shot indoors, is followed by a more lyrical expanse that becomes a more sensual, atmospheric expression of the city and its surrounding regions, even more free and tenderly fluid than the earlier part, telling two very individualistic stories about the ways of love, offering a range of responses to love and sex, exploring themes of sexuality, relationships, and intimacy, with a more emphatic expression of queerness that may be appealing to a broader audience, with an emphasis on getting people to talk about sexuality in a more open way, while also exploring the boundaries of love in relationships without always feeling pressured by norms and rules.  Officially celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the city of Oslo adapting its name, transitioning from the Danish Kristiania, or Christiania, named after King Christian IV, one of Denmark’s many rulers over Norway, this segment emphasizes the modern identity of the capital, which is over 1,000 years old, complete with a guided walking tour of some of the essential monuments, led by Heidi (Marte Engebrigtsen), a project manager for the city who works in the cultural department, where she’s busy planning events for the upcoming centenary celebration.  Her focus is on the old Oslo, symbolized by the town hall at the gates of the harbor, behind which the city center opens, analyzing various sculptures and frescoes through a queer and sexual lens, explaining the fluid sexualities of the sculptures suggest an unusual openness to the city, “Every aspect of it radiates humanity,” something like the Norwegian understanding of being human, demonstrating a welcoming and recognizable concern for people, inclusive of everybody, but she encounters pushback from colleagues, who prefer to invite popular author Karl Ove Knausgård.  Complicated and thoughtful, but never intrusive, written and directed by Haugerud, who has long been known in Norway as a novelist, where he manages to make his characters talk about their expectations and love experiences with remarkable lightness in this unusually conversation-driven comedy of manners, yet what really stands out is the beautiful use of the ferry operating between Oslo and Nesodden, an offshore peninsula in the Oslofjord where the warm tones by cinematographer Cecilie Semec are more pronounced, undoubtedly the most beautiful of the three segments, with views of Oslo from the water, where a wider expanse allows us to see the prevalence of water all around the city, with poetic, shifting patterns of light between day and night, including shots of the harbor in the darkness, eloquently capturing the nocturnal evening moods, as you can see the whole beauty of Oslo and the surrounding mountains during the many ferry trips, recalling the barge floating down the River Seine in Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d'un rêveur) (1971).  The ferry is a central location where characters meet as they come and go, acting as a neutral space, or a kind of stream-of-conscious, inner world for the characters, representing a middle ground between the different romantic destinations and lifestyles they are exploring, as so much is revealed in these short distance travels, articulating the complexity of relationships and the different ways of establishing a human connection, apparently inspired by the unmistakable cinema of Éric Rohmer’s TALES OF THE FOUR SEASONS, spread out over the decade of the 90’s, dedicated to the art of conversation and the rules of attraction.  Funded entirely by Norwegian money, the second to be filmed (but third chronologically), there’s an abundance of aerial shots, offering a more expansive view of the giant cranes, building scaffolding, and many construction projects of a city still in development, with quiet moments and intimate conversations leading to more contemplative ruminations.                         

At the outset we are introduced to Marianne, a urologist in her 40’s (Andrea Bræin Hovig, written with her in mind), and Tor, a caring hospital nurse who’s considerably younger (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen), both working on the oncology ward, often faced with delivering the bad news about prostate cancer, including the difficulties explaining the treatment options available, with all the accompanying risks, like impotence, while Marianne conveys the inevitable, that “the organs of the lower abdomen have the peculiar ability to make us feel shame through their secretions – whether they work or not.”  So right from the outset, a predominate theme is facing our mortality, which it explores with a quiet tenderness, bringing into focus rather unconventional approaches to romance, with an exploration of desire and emotional fulfillment, offering an alternative to the nuclear family.  Mostly broken down into scenes with just two people talking, revealing their differing expectations and romantic experiences, avoiding any signs of melodramatic overreach, Marianne’s close friend Heidi sets her up with a divorced geologist named Ole (Thomas Gullestad), finding him handsome and charming enough, with a passionate love of rocks, and children, but she’s distinctively put-off by the idea of being in a complicated relationship with him, especially when he has two ex-wives, one living right next door, Solveig (Marian Saastad Ottesen), making it convenient to mutually raise their two children.  On the ferry back to Oslo after a date with Ole, Marianne bumps into Tor, who is renting a cabin for the summer in Nesodden, learning that he is gay, sharing his experience of spontaneous intimacy, as he doesn’t link sex to love, informing her that he usually cruises the ferry to find other men on apps to have sex with, like Grindr, once the exclusive domain of the gay community, but now dating apps like Tinder have opened up to everyone.  Having no real interest in static relationships, their interaction inspires Marianne to begin exploring the idea of having a more casual, laissez-faire approach to love and sexual relationships instead of playing the dating game, suggesting she needs to be more adventurous and sexually fluid in her encounters with men, wondering if Tor's living-in-the-moment philosophies could work in her own life, which leads to a random sexual encounter with a married carpenter (Morten Svartveit).  As in Oslo Trilogy: Sex, an interrogation of queerness expands the boundaries and opens up new doors of heterosexuality, at least partially inspired by Olivia Laing’s book The Lonely City, where a straight woman becomes intrigued by the gay cruising culture of New York City.  In a better world, we would be more honest with each other, more transparent, and make more emotionally informed decisions without fear of being judged or morally condemned, though we have yet to reach a point where women can make choices regarding their sexuality and love life without having to defend or explain themselves.  Tor ends up finding himself attracted to ferry passenger Bjørn (Lars Jacob Holm), a reserved gay psychologist who crosses paths with Tor again in the city, as he becomes a hospital patient recovering from prostate surgery.  Checking in on him at the hospital, Tor demonstrates the kindness of his profession, becoming a model of care and compassion, yet his attraction and personal touch blur together in defiance of professional principles, with Marianne reminding him of the patient’s vulnerability post-surgery, so he needs to be careful not to cross the line, while he, in turn, reminds her that you can’t actually assume people understand what you’re saying in the heightened confusion of receiving a cancer diagnosis.  One in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, yet what’s rarely spoken about is how the outcome disproportionately affects the sex lives of gay men, as Tor educates her on how the removal of the prostate is actually more detrimental to gays, as it’s such a major aspect of their sexual pleasure since it is directly stimulated during anal sex. 

With a constantly changing focus, and a camera that is always in motion, the Trilogy follows characters as attentively and unobtrusively through the changing and newly-built neighborhoods of Oslo, where each segment seems to focus on a different part of the city, with each visiting the city center.  The real celebration, however, is the human connection, with the ongoing interactions represented by the ferry constantly going back and forth.  Some of the most hauntingly beautiful scenes take place in Nesodden, which despite its close proximity to Oslo feels isolated and remote, like the association we have with Bergman’s Fårö Islands, with cabins having giant windows overlooking the water, which are especially mesmerizing at night, evoking a distinct tranquility and calmness that was simply missing in the first segment of the Oslo Trilogy: Sex.  While not shot in ‘Scope, like the first segment, what’s remarkable about the film is how it explores relationships from an unconventional perspective, where the “anything goes” philosophy is reminiscent of Paul Mazursky’s comedic relationship study BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (1969), which was advertised at the time as “Consider the Possibilities,” so it’s hardly new, yet seen through a queer lens, with Tor and Bjørn developing a tender bond the more they get to know each other, one that involves extreme intimacy, but no sex, a dynamic that’s often not in consideration within an often sex-obsessed gay culture.  Instead the film explores Bjørn’s traumatic and emotionally riddled past in a lengthy monologue sequence, “Sex is never just sex,” coming out during the 80’s when gays were being ravaged by an AIDS epidemic, feeling like he was being punished for being gay, part of a generation of gay men who have a more markedly cautious idea of casual sex, coming full circle as now his life is threatened once again by cancer.  Tor is literally a spiritual healer, a transitional bridge for Bjørn during a particularly difficult time recovering from surgery, knowing full well that his life will probably never be the same afterwards, but Tor is always extremely positive and life affirming, revealing how love can take on different shapes.  Marianne’s pursuit of more flexible boundaries from casual relationships without complications and obligations instead of the stress of fully formed committments leaves her traditionally-minded friend Heidi mortified, unable to recognize her friend anymore, which is hard to fathom, considering that early walk through Oslo’s city hall architecture, with a sexually diverse interpretation, was largely for Marianne’s benefit, finding clues that are largely missed through conventional viewing.  Fascinating and at times inspiring, what stands out is the assuredness of the characters, who are continually honest with themselves as they talk about relationships and how we can improve them, reflected in the director’s non-judgmental gaze, quietly subdued, yet hopefully evocative of a better understanding of ourselves, as opposed to the incendiary emotional fireworks of Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap) (1973), with characters mercilessly raging over a decade’s worth of marital turmoil.  In what was likely envisioned as the concluding episode of the Trilogy, the film ends on an uplifting rooftop musical interlude with a deeply expressive song, Once Upon YouTube (2:02), by Peder Capjon Kjellsby sung by Norwegian jazz vocalist Solveig Slettahjell that morphs immediately into the more spontaneous jazz riff of Grunnstoff (Live) YouTube (2:02), offering a festive final note in its commemoration of Oslo.  Arguing for freedom and individuality in how people might pursue romance, as love can manifest in many different and unexpected ways, Haugerud is striving for a sexual and emotional closeness with others without necessarily conforming to the societal norms and conventions that currently define relationships, instead emphasizing ambiguity, becoming an example of how queer cinema has really evolved over the last decade, exploring how individuality can create different forms of interpersonal relationships, approaching the subject with tenderness, warmth, and sophistication.