This is me second Hong Sungsoo film. The first, Alone on the Beach At Night, was very good with an excellent performance by Kim Min-hee..
This is in similar territory. In real life Sungsoo had an affair with Min-hee, which became a tabloid scandal. He has apparently made several films set in and around the film world dealing with fictional variations of their story.
In The Day He Arrives, a former director returns to Soule to see an old friend and encounters a combination of former acquaintances, and new people, some of whom know him by reputation.
In very subtle ways events replay with variations. People seem unaware of previous conversations, encounters are slightly too dramatic and revealing, women react - more or less like they might be in a movie.
The movie never directly says that it's about constructing stories but there are hints. We see him writing, we hear him doing voice over that seems no more aware of other events than characters are. The overall sense is of the director character reworking his entangled life and trying to put it into a story.
Just as the real director. Hong Songsoo is doing in film after film. Highly recommend this moving, intelligent film
This is in similar territory. In real life Sungsoo had an affair with Min-hee, which became a tabloid scandal. He has apparently made several films set in and around the film world dealing with fictional variations of their story.
In The Day He Arrives, a former director returns to Soule to see an old friend and encounters a combination of former acquaintances, and new people, some of whom know him by reputation.
In very subtle ways events replay with variations. People seem unaware of previous conversations, encounters are slightly too dramatic and revealing, women react - more or less like they might be in a movie.
The movie never directly says that it's about constructing stories but there are hints. We see him writing, we hear him doing voice over that seems no more aware of other events than characters are. The overall sense is of the director character reworking his entangled life and trying to put it into a story.
Just as the real director. Hong Songsoo is doing in film after film. Highly recommend this moving, intelligent film