The Films of Hong Sang-Soo

[Steven H]

It looks like Tai Seng is releasing Virgin Stripped Bare... in R1. Dollars to donuts this will just be a port, but maybe they'll put some effort into it. Maybe.

[artfilmfan]

I thought the Tai Seng release of "Virgin Stripped Bare" has been available for a while now (at YesAsia, DVDAsian, or HKFlix) ?

[Steven H]

Yeah, it's R0, but I wasn't able to get it through regular etailers. Maybe someone else owned the R1 video rights, I have no clue.

[Michael Kerpan]

Hoberman reviews Woman on the Beach

[sidehacker]

I just finished The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well and it wasn't nearly as great as the rest of Hong's films. I guess it's worth noting that this is the only one of his films that he didn't write but my problems don't even lie there. I guess the cinematography just looks so mid-90s in a way. He has the right ideas for compositions but visually it justs really bland, I guess. In his more recent films, he has tried to downplay visual stylization but they are all work for me. I mean, A Tale of Cinema is one of the best films I've ever seen...uhh anyway, there's even more incomplete thoughts on my blog.

Hong is really great otherwise. Really, he is!

[denti alligator]

I know there's a little discussion of his new Woman on the Beach in the Korean R3 DVD thread for this film, but I wanted to shift it here.

Having just seen this I will say that I was impressed, but that it's the least interesting Sang Soo (or is it Hong?) film I've seen. My wife and I agreed that it looked and felt a lot like a Rohmer film (which isn't bad, of course). The narrative complexity is missing and the writing (dialogue) seemed just a tad contrived at times. Others?

[sidehacker]

Hong is his family name.

But anyway, I disagree. I'm not too familiar with Rohmer but from what I have seen, he's a terrible writer. I think he used his characters as mouthpieces for presenting ideas as opposed to creating fully fleshed out characters which is more of what Hong does. The narrative experiments in Hong's past films are not gimmicks, but devices that help us to learn more about the characters. Woman on the Beach doesn't use such things and results in being told a bit more straightforwardly but Hong still takes the same amount of care into crafting his characters. I like both approaches, personally and find all of Hong's films equally fascinating. Picking a favorite would be hard but A Tale of Cinema takes the cake for me.

[Michael Kerpan]

I would say that Women on the Beach _seems_ more simple than his earlier work (as have his other more recent films), but that the "seeming" and the "reality" in Hong's work are not always identical.

WotB is one of my favorites to date, and I think that, if simpler is some ways, it is richer in others. And the female lead role here is one of Hong's best -- and she is backed by a much richer array of female characters than is the norm.

I thin there are similarities between Rohmer and Hong -- but only to the Rohmer I like best (e.g. Green Ray) which is looser and is far less talkative than the Rohmerian norm.

[denti alligator]

Is Tale of Cinema available on DVD anywhere? It's the only Hong besides Woman is the Future of Man (readily available in R1) that I haven't seen.

[sidehacker]

I meant simple in a narrative sense, his characters are always complex.

[Michael Kerpan]

Is Tale of Cinema available on DVD anywhere? It's the only Hong besides Woman is the Future of Man (readily available in R1) that I haven't seen.

Currently out of print it would seem -- the only DVD seems to have been the Korean one.

[souvenir]

Tale of Cinema seems to be available from Han Books here. I ordered it from there last May when I couldn't find it anywhere else and didn't have any problems.

[denti alligator]

Tale of Cinema seems to be available from Han Books here. I ordered it from there last May when I couldn't find it anywhere else and didn't have any problems.

Thanks, I got it on ebay $20 shipped from Korea. Not bad.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Hong's new, mostly-Paris-set film (Night and Day) is at the Berlinale. It doesn't premiere until the 12th, but here's some general impressions of an advance screening if you're like me and really desperate for info. There's also a Korean-only trailer (which I saw before Flight of the Red Balloon, funnily enough) and two posters.

[Michael Kerpan]

Fans of Kim Seung Woo (male lead of Woman on the Beach) might want to keep an eye out for BAE Doo-na's latest TV show (How to Meet) A Perfect Neighbor.. This 20 episode, 20+ hour show is not Hong-quality (obviously) -- but nonetheless should be a treat for fans of KSW and BDN. (The two palso layed the leads in an early 2000s series, Rosemary, that I have not yet seen).

[foggy eyes]

DVD Times review of YA's Turning Gate.

[sidehacker]

Oddly enough, I just finished that up. Wonderful movie, maybe even my second favorite from Hong. I agree with the earlier comments about it being the most structurally straightforward of all his films but I'd also say that it's his most personal too. Don't get me wrong, I love all of his films but generally speaking, they're slightly on the more neutral/objective side. I could use a rewatch of all his films, but I'm pretty sure this is only one where he centers his focus squarely on one character.

[yoshimori]

Hong's new, mostly-Paris-set film (Night and Day) is at the berlinale.

I just saw this in Hong Kong. Continues Hong's string of "what-utter-jerks-Korean-men-are" films that includes Woman is the Future of Man, A Tale of Cinema, and Woman on the Beach. In this one an incredibly lazy, whiny young "painter" - he never paints anything - ruins the lives of two Korean women while's he hiding out in Paris, phoning his wife back in Korea at night, crying about how much he misses her and begging her to let him hear her masturate. He meets his self-centered match in a young woman who's been kicked out of art school for plagiarism.

Some hilarious moments. And Beethoven. I quite liked it. A bit long at 140 minutes, but ...

[colinr0380]

Filmbrain on Night and Day.

[Michael Kerpan]

Filmbrain on Night and Day.

Sounds tremendous. I'm certain my only option is to await the eventual Korean DVD release.

[justeleblanc]

For someone still embarrassingly unfamiliar with any of his films, where should I start (and where can I find it?) And if anyone can direct me to other Korean art films that are worth my time that don't resemble Oldboy at all, please let me know. This is a gaping hole I'm hoping to fill.

[denti alligator]

Start with The Power of Kangwon Province and The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors. Both are available in decent Korean editions (sold even on amazon I think).

[Michael Kerpan]

For someone still embarrassingly unfamiliar with any of his films, where should I start (and where can I find it?) And if anyone can direct me to other Korean art films that are worth my time that don't resemble Oldboy at all, please let me know. This is a gaping hole I'm hoping to fill.

I would recommend working your way through his films chronologically -- if you can. The only problem is that his first film (The Day a Pig Fell into the Well) is atypical in some ways and -- far worse -- is only available on DVD with near-gibberish subtitles (all too often) . So -- you might want to start with Power of Kangwon Province instead.

note: Denti beat me by a minute or two with the same recommendation -- Virgin was MY first and still favorite (or co-favorite).

As to other non-Hong) Korean films -- why not start a new thread in some appropriate spot for this. ;~}

[justeleblanc]

Thanks, chronological it is!

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I just want to go to bat here for Huh Moonyung's KOFIC volume on Hong. There are three essays (including a penetrating if difficult one by Claire Denis and a rather basic piece by David Bordwell) an an extensive biography (very interesting to me, since I'd seen no biographical information on Hong before this -- it seems the first half of Tale of Cinema may be at least partly autobiographical!), but the centerpiece is an interview with Hong, which covers all of his films through Woman on the Beach.

Hong comes off as a bit falsely modest, repeatedly chalking his decisions up to "intuition" but providing reasoned explanations (even if they're post-facto ones) for almost everything he's asked about. Kim Sang-kyung (the lead in Turning Gate and Tale of Cinema) says much the same thing in his interview, using the odd "Can you speak English?" gag in Turning Gate as an example:

I thought it was a joke or something, so I asked him, "You put it in there for an outrageous laugh?" He said, "No, why?" "But this is too much? Why say 'Can you speak English?'" Then he would explain in detail: "You followed the woman. But you know that she's married. You have to find a way to distract the husband who is following you. But you are in Gyeongju. There are many foreign tourists in Gyeongju. There are Korean roof tiles (giwa) here. Foreigners look at the roof tiles, take interest and ask, 'Can you speak English?'" Well, that made sense to me. Whenever I would ask, he had answers for me. He has his logics down to the teeth. There is no room for an argument.

There's lots of similar discussion of his working methods in both interviews, which tends to confirm my feeling that Hong is simply wired differently than everyone else working in movies today, even his ostensible forebear Rohmer. Interestingly, Hong barely mentions Rohmer, but he's quite attached to Bresson -- I'm too much of a neophyte to closely examine the points of contact between Hong and Bresson, although his emphasis on gestures seems a bit Bressonian. (Kim notes an incident where he was asked to redo a scene because Hong didn't like the way he folded his umbrella, and Hong's minimal scripts still allow room for character descriptions like "chewing a wine glass while drinking.")

Unfortunately -- getting off track for a moment -- I'm not as wild about the other KOFIC book I've read (Lee Chang-dong). Lee speaks mostly in generalities and the author (Kim Young-jin) tends to fall back on scene-by-scene descriptions and broad claims that he doesn't really support (for example, his initial description of Green Fish baldly states that it "condenses the history of Korean civilization into the structure of a gangster noir," but when he elaborates on this later he apparently redefines "the history of Korean civilization" as the 1970s and the 1990s). I also wish it had gone in-depth on Secret Sunshine, but I guess they wanted the book out first for the "tie-in" opportunity. Has anyone read the Jang Sun-woo book?

And since it hasn't been mentioned elsewhere, I may as well warn that the New Yorker Woman Is the Future of Man looks noticeably worse than the R3K -- a very soft transfer from what look like slightly worn materials. The New Yorker wins out in terms of English-friendly extras, but those aren't very good (mainly a rote making-of documentary, hamstrung by the fact that Hong evidently didn't want to be interviewed). The Tai Seng Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors has similar PQ problems (go with the remastered Spectrum release). But the YA Turning Gate is fine.