Introduction: Hong Sang-soo in Brief

Easily one of Hong Sang-soo's shortest features (running 105 minutes), Introduction nevertheless feels distinct within Hong's oeuvre with its black and white footage, relatively large cast, and slightly more active camerawork. Which isn't to suggest that this doesn't bear his hallmarks. It's just that most scenes despite the single shot POV feature more zooms and pans, and even occassionally splice in other material. Introduction also has a young protagonist: a former actor (Shin Seok-ho) with intimacy issues on camera and relationship issues off.

His girlfriend (Park Mi-so) has problems of her own. She's relocated to Berlin to pursue a degree in fashion, her mother (Seo Young-hwa) is a bit of an underminer, and she's been recently diagnosed with uveitis. Unless that last part is a drunk dream experienced by her beau after too many drinks with his mom (Cho Yun-hee), an old actor (Gi Ju-bong), and a cigarette-bumming best friend (Ha Seong-guk). Neither has an easy road ahead. Maybe his acupuncturist father (Kim Young-ho) can help, although he's been known to forget clients with inserted needles behind the curtain. Better to seek assistance from the new roommate (Kim Young-ho) who -- behind the scenes -- is also serving as still photographer, production manager, and script supervisor.

The Day After: Seeing Theater

How did Hong Sang-soo manage to make three films in a single year? It certainly wasn't by sloppily running from one to the next. For there's nothing messy or rushed about The Day After, the third of his 2017 trilogy of sorts that also includes Claire's Camera and On the Beach at Night Alone. But it probably helps that he brought in some of the same actors for each film which, because of their intimate nature, concentrates all the action among a very small cast. For The Day After, he also shoots in black and white (which simplifies the design elements) and shoots many of the two-person, largely interior scenes in extended, medium long shots with no cuts and only the occasional zoom, all of which heightens our sense of eavesdropping on a very personal conversation (or perhaps a master class in acting). Indeed Hong's choice to have so much of the action filmed in profile turns the face-to-camera shot into something remarkable since it's only when a character looks away from whomever she's talking to that we see her face directly. And what faces these are to look at.

As Song Areum, a young woman who is starting a fraught new job at a book publishing company, Kim Min-hee constantly delights us with her asides of impatience, distress, confusion. For when she turns away from the other character, she's in some ways shielding her face, meaning that these shots of Kim turning aside are shots of her face unshielded. It's the hidden exposed! As a despairing wife, actress Cho Yun-hee similarly is constantly flashing her hidden self to the camera as she struggles to get her husband to admit that he's been seeing another woman while he noisily slurps his soup. If Kim Sae-byeok shares less, it's because her role as the other woman demands that she generally be on her guard. The only time we truly see her psychologically naked is when she's drunk. Life's tough that way. At the center of it all is Kim "The Boss" Bongwan, the book publisher played by Kwon Hae-yo with an honesty that makes him both impossible to like or dislike. As for the movie as a whole, I liked it very much. I'm so appreciative of the Museum of the Moving Image for programming this trilogy.