In Our Day: Actors in Search of Something

Hong Sang-soo's In Our Day has two parallel storylines: in one, an aspiring actress (Park Mi-so) comes to visit a successful one (Kim Min-hee) who's staying with the latter's possibly alcoholic friend (Song Seon-mi); in the other, an aspiring actor (Ha Seong-guk) drops by the apartment of a newly sober poet (Gi Ju-bong) who's being filmed by a young documentarian (Kim Sunghyun) for a school project. But as the poet states himself: "Life seems to go on without any connection to those reasons." Like many other Hong films, there's a lot of loosely connected dialogue delivered in profile by two characters facing off so sometimes having a triangle of players lends itself to more dynamic exchanges and tableaux. Even an early scene between two friends benefits when a big fluffy cat named "Us" enters the frame.

In that first scenario, the drama finally escalates when Us suddenly disappears, sending the two main women into a panicked despair. In the second storyline, the poet descends back into bad drinking habits when his admirer runs out to get two bottles of soju. As in his other recent pics, Hong takes on the roles of cinematographer, director, writer, composer, and editor. Is it my imagination or as a result is there less music, less cuts, and less varied angles? The result lands somewhere between Andy Warhol and John Cassavetes, with maybe a little of Woody Allen at his more philosophical thrown in — a static pseudorealism that's neither antidrama nor heightened naturalism. For Hong, one of the most prolific Korean auteurs, "maintaining a clear vision may be the hardest thing in the world." He's right. Just ask the poet.

The Woman Who Ran: Post-Marital Research

I haven't seen a Hong Sang-soo film for awhile so it's a bit of a readjustment getting into his rhythm and flow. I know from past experiences, however, that sometimes what looks like a meandering improvisation adds up to something quite substantial. I knew to be patient! Yet what to make of the initial conversations in The Woman Who Ran re: the beauty of a cow's eyes, the bullying by a neighbor's rooster, or the ethics surrounding the feeding of stray cats? Before you've figured that out, Hong has shifted to a completely new scene: gone is the divorcee (Seo Young-hwa) who appears to be in a lesbian couple; in her place is a Pilates instructor (Song Seon-mi) navigating the challenges of dating in middle age. The topics shift from animals to money: a rent deposit, her million-dollar-savings, her successful business... See a connection yet? I didn't.

Which brings us to the final reunion at Cafe Emu where our protagonist (Kim Min-hee) has one more "girl talk," this time with an old friend (Kim Sae-byeok) who now runs a movie theater. This last encounter has the least amount of dialogue but it's also when the movie comes together. For each of these reunions finds our drifting diminishing her feelings from her unseen husband. The random meet-ups suddenly register as a testing of the waters for a possible future, always with an awareness that the men in these other women's lives are uniformly irritating: a demanding neighbor, a stalking poet (Ha Seong-guk), and a self-important author (Kwon Hae-hyo).

Moby Dick: Reporters Make Terrific Heroes

The pursuit of truth is laudable. That might not sound profound but when you consider how many people hide behind lies (white and otherwise), you realize precisely how exceptional such an objective can be. Which is why movies about indefatigable reporters committed to bucking the system and getting the facts can be so gosh-darn-tootin' exhilarating. Movies like Park In-je's Moby Dick. This 2011 thriller about three resourceful newspaper journalists — a veteran (Hwang Jung-min), a recent hire (Kim Sang-ho), and an up-and-comer (Kim Min-hee) — had me on the edge of my seat as the film's central trio got embroiled in its search for the members of the shadow government that killed off people in the name of profit.

As films based on conspiracy theories go, Moby Dick isn't breaking new ground. And with Kim Kyeong-yeong phoning in a typical baddie performance, the film's main threat can feel like a cliche. But the camaraderie of the central newshounds is real; the excitement they generate by getting closer to cracking the case will keep you up past your bedtime. Who cares that what they reveal feels implausible? Or that their main informant (Jin Goo) i a pretty-faced zombie. Okay, I cared a little. Just not enough to spoil the movie though.

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.

On the Beach at Night Alone: The Coast of Dystopia

Hong Sang-soo, the auteur of the consequential inconsequential, whose films sometimes feel like well-stitched patchwork anthologies of irresponsible slights, irresistible self-deceptions, and eloquent awkwardnesses returns with On the Beach at Night Alone, a fragmentary and ultimately somber tale literally split into two distinct chapters — the first set in Hamburg of all places. This prelude of sorts concerns a directionless young actress (Kim Min-hee) who has fled from a disastrous relationship with an unseen, off-screen married South Korea director who has a child but has promised to visit her abroad. Her friend (Seo Young-hwa) in Hamburg, while supportive, doesn't want her to move in -- which is wise given how blunt they are with each other. After the two meet up with a German (Mark Peranson) and his eternally tired wife/girlfriend (Bettina Steinbrügge) for dinner, they take off for an evening stroll on the beach.

The next, longer part of the movie takes place back in South Korea where our lost leading lady now reunites with a trio of former friends in a small town in which she likely shot a film earlier in her career. Because this small group includes Jeong Jae-yeong who like Seo and Kim co-star in Right Now, Wrong Then, On the Beach at Night Alone can feel like a strange sequel. Sure, the names and jobs and identities have changed but doesn't that sometimes happen with the passage of time. I doubt that this is Hong's intent but the recasting of this trio of talented actors does make for especially fascinating viewing.

The second chunk's extended dream sequence (which also ends up on a fairly empty beach) throws all of the action in question into a weird way. But with scenes like the one in which a window washer keeps wiping the smudgy window without water as if he's a renegade performance artist staging an impromptu routine outside an expensive hotel, Hong's pushing beyond hyper-realism into another realm. I don't know what to call it ultimately but I certainly do enjoy spending a couple of hours there given the chance.

Right Now, Wrong Then: Oops, He Did It Again

The paradigm of the lovable rogue has not aged particularly well. For whereas ten years ago, many still considered the hard-drinking, womanizing, lone-wolf ne'er-do-well an inexplicably appealing type, nowadays the general consensus is not so flattering. At least for the moment, an asshole's an asshole. And while the leading men in Hong Sang-soo's movies could certainly be cited as examples of that no-longer-so-likable Lothario, there's one major difference: Hong recognizes who they are as much as we do. We don't come away from his 2015 movie Right Now, Wrong Then with the impression that filmmaker Ham Cheon-soo (Jeong Jae-yeong) is an attractive bad boy who can't help being bad. To the contrary, he comes across as a preposterously immature middle-aged dude with an age-inappropriate haircut, a drinking problem, and a sad need to seek validation by seducing a pretty woman 10 years younger than he is. He's a specimen, an outdated archetype, more than he's someone out to trigger our sympathy.

As if to underscore that this guy is caught in a cycle of unawareness, Hong divides the film into two parts that more or less repeat the same story with minor variations. Think of it as a scaled back, hyper-naturalistic version of Sliding Doors or Melinda and Melinda only this time, the choices made by the protagonist aren't going to be that radically different when we switch from part one to part two. In both sections, Cheon-soo will court the model-turned-painter Yoon Hee-jeong (Kim Min-hee), imbibe too much at a very small party, then bullshit at a poorly attended screening of one of his films. If one sequence ends more happily than the other, that's merely luck at work because Cheon-soo is destined to make the same basic mistakes, although the severity of them may change depending on the day. It's as if, Hong is letting us experience a "what if" scenario that acknowledges that our choices are more likely to be similar if we had a chance to do it all again. There are second chances for sure but sometimes, they're just second times to lose.

The Handmaiden: Woman Is the Future of Man

Lady Vengeance marked a turning point in Park Chan-wook's career, being as it was, his first feature film to have a female protagonist. He'd had important female characters before: the radical girlfriend in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, the unfortunate daughter in Oldboy, even the special investigator in Joint Security Area. Yet, as you can see, these women were largely defined by their relationships to men. Once Park put a woman front and center, however, his female characters got a hell of a lot more interesting. The insane young woman in I'm a Cyborg, But that's Okay and his variation of Therese Raquin for his vampire flick Thirst are much more complicated than the various women who came before. I guess, Park simply realized that he couldn't get Song Kang-ho for every movie he was making.

Which isn't to say that Park has moved beyond the male gaze with his latest. To the contrary, The Handmaiden seems to revel in it. The more powerful his on-screen women become, the more sexual they become as well. This particular movie takes that idea to its utmost extreme. The love triangle that forms between an orphan-heiress (Kim Min-hee), the titular handmaiden (Kim Tae-ri), and a fraudulent Count (Ha Jung-woo) would in theory show three different pairings but when it comes to the kissing, stroking, fingering, nipple licking, felatio, scissoring, and the insertion of ringing balls, most of that's done by the two women to each other. Intercourse between a man and a woman is more likely to be threatened (or read via old smutty books) than actualized. But this it too titilating to be a feminist manifesto. Sometimes the sex is shown from a humorous vantage point (the crotch POV); other times, the nudity is highly theatrical (in profile atop a table). Park's often been criticized for the violence in his movies (and there's definitely some shockers here) but you've got to give him credit: He also knows how to compose a picture — admittedly with some serious help from Chung Chung-hoon, the brilliant cinematographer who'd worked with him on six other films before this one.

No Tears for the Dead: God Bless the Assassinated Child

No Tears for the Dead is a movie plagued by bad guys. The anti-hero is an assassin (Jang Dong-gun) who mistakenly kills a young girl (Kang Ji-woo). The young girl's mom (Kim Min-hee) is a greedy capitalist more concerned with mergers and acquisitions than maternity. The assassin's best friend (Brian Tee) has been assigned to kill him. The best friend's father figure is a kind of merciless godfather who seems to want everyone to die. And so on and so on. Even the little girl who gets offed in the opening scene is a bad girl when you come to think of it. I'm sure, her criminal father told her not to leave the table at the nightclub, and clearly, she disobeyed.

I'm a bad guy, too. Which isn't to say that I've murdered anyone or purposely executed any business deals with utter disregard to the large numbers of people who'd lose their jobs in the process. But I've definitely got my own list of sins to weigh me down so a cast full of reprehensible people trying to do right by their wrongs sits perfectly fine with me. I get the idea of going to extremes — explosions in buildings, machine gunfire, computer hacking gazillions of dollars, identity theft — as forms of doing penance. We can't whip ourselves with branches anymore. We refuse to wear hair-shirts. So it makes sense that we'd randomly stab, detonate, self-annihilate, and relive awful memories of mom (Kim Ji-seong) committing suicide by shooting herself in the head in the desert as a way to clear our brains. At least in the movies.

In real life, I guess we just stew. And hope that filmmakers like Lee Jeong-beom will write and direct slick, thrillingly violent movies that make us feel like we're exorcising our demons, even if we're really just distracting ourselves from dealing with our grim, not-so-glamorous realities. Recently, I spent a few weeks watching Shirley Temple movies. She was the box office queen during the Depression. But nowadays, cute won't cut it. We need blood. So we sacrifice the on-screen child.

Actresses: The Factor of Six

Six real-life actresses are invited to a photo shoot for the cover of Vogue Korea. So... Paint on that jungle red nail polish and let the DIVA WARS begin! Well, kinda. More like, Lee Je-yong invites six real-life actresses to improvise a movie about six actresses (modeled after themselves) doing a photo shoot for Vogue. And most of the time, everyone plays pretty nicely. Which isn't to say that the resultant Actresses is without some display of leading lady ego conflict. Choi Ji-woo intentionally arrives late and wants her own dressing room with a masseuse; Go Hyun-jung gets drunk and lashes out at rival Choi; Yoon Yeo-jeong, the grande dame of them all, gossips endlessly, especially about her own insecurities about being invited to the shoot so late in the game. But overall this group of women is surprisingly civil. Repeatedly offered opportunities to create drama, they repeatedly choose to make nice and make friends.

Director Lee doesn't fight their collective impulse to bond but wisely shifts his objective, allowing the six women an extended, impromptu celebratory feast that has them meditating on the nature of celebrity, jealousy, and age over Craft Service snacks and Don Perignon champagne. Yoon (because of her years in the biz) gives the most nuanced and consistently ironic performance with her mixture of hauteur and insecurity while the quirky Kim Ok-bin, the youngest on set, steals focus with slyly complementary moments that convey the mind of an innocent trickster. Although Go seems most at ease with the setup —attributable to her work with Song Sang-soo, a filmmaker whose work feels largely improvisational — she takes a back seat during "table talk" while 50-something Lee Mi-sook comes to the fore.

The final actress in the group, Kim Min-hee, might be easily forgotten if it weren't for the individual photos sessions encapsulated within the film. With haute couture bunny ears and a cupcake topped by vanilla icing, Kim comes alive before the camera, once she's free from the competitive aspect organic to improvising among such a cast. Which isn't to say that she's not good in the group scenes. She simply chooses to play a chorus role: Watch her sitting quietly as the others ham it up and you'll see that she's actually grounding the action. Now that's one selfless actress!

Helpless: Save a Little Pity for the Killer, Too

Say what you want about nature versus nurture, there's something invigorating about a movie that sees its primary murder suspect as a victim. In Helpless, that could-be killer is Seon-yeong (Kim Min-hie), a sweet and pretty bride-to-be whose initial bad credit history uncovers an even darker past including prostitution, identity theft and a handful of dead former female friends. In some ways, Seon-yeong was born into this crappy life. Her father's mounting debts led to loan sharks breaking up her first marriage then turning her into a sex slave. While Seon-yeong manages to escape that fate in one way, it permanently damages her and follows her wherever she goes. A survivor without a moral compass, she basically does whatever it takes to get by. She's been conditioned by extremes.

Veterinarian -- and dupe -- Min-ho (Lee Seon-gyu) might've been her ticket out. He promises a life in which he will bring home the bacon then cook it if she just stays home to make babies as sweet and pretty as she is. Could she have changed to become his perfect wife? We'll never know. And it's not as if writer-director Byun Young-joo has you wishing that Min-ho had never enlisted the help of his cousin (Jo Seong-ha), a disgraced detective dismissed from the force for taking bribes, to dig up her sordid past. But you can understand why her potential guilt doesn't destroy Min-ho's love for her so much as it wreaks havoc on his brain. Love isn't rational. And in a way murder isn't either.

Kim is perfect as the film's central cipher as is Lee as her distraught fiance. Jo turns in solid work as the jaded ex-cop as do Choi Duek-mun as a sympathetic police officer with his own corrupt back story and Kim Byul as a chipper veterinarian's assistant who keeps stumbling across further clues. Byun's tight screenplay is based on a Japanese thriller All She Was Worth by Miyabe Miyuki whose work has inspired even more films in her own country. And you can see why.