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| Writer/director Hong Sang-soo |
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| Kim Min-hee with the director |
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| 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.
