Sang-soo Hong

Synopsis:
A French woman drinks makgeolli in Korea after losing her means of income, then teaches French to two Korean women.Read More »

The Power of Kangwon Province traces, one after the other, the trajectories of a man and a woman traveling separately through the mountainous eastern province of South Korea known as Kangwon. Both have left Seoul for the weekend to get some perspective on their lives and to assuage a common sense of loss and loneliness. As they wander, the pair just misses crossing paths with each other. Their separate encounters, however, reveal to the spectator links between the two drifting characters. This resonant work firmly announces Hong’s fascination with chance, the tenuousness of connection and the ability of narrative cinema to orchestrate the two. – DP (Harvard Film Archive)Read More »

In Seoul, two alternating conversations: an actress is solicited by an amateur; an old poet hosts a fan. The two stars dodge the existential questions of their guests with food, alcohol, guitar playing and naps, games with a cat and rock, paper, scissors. The actress is thinking of giving up her career; the poet is struggling with alcohol and tobacco withdrawal. With the compact eloquence of a haiku, In Our Day invites us to look at what is most important and what makes each day of our lives matter.Read More »

Quote:
‘We can’t easily tell night from day during the summers here,” observes one character early on in Hong Sang-soo’s Paris-set Night and Day—a nearly throwaway line that circumscribes the sense of physical and spiritual dislocation felt by the film’s protagonist. Like most of the director’s leading men, Kim Sung-nam (Kim Yeong-ho) is a hangdog, self-absorbed, soju-guzzling Hong alter ego—a fortyish Korean artist who flees to the City of Lights after an episode of recreational drug use leads him to believe he is under police investigation. There, he rents a room in a crowded boarding house and resolves to lay low until he can safely return home to his wife, Sung-in (Hwang Su-jeong), or else find a way to bring her to France. But resolutions aside, it isn’t long before Sung-nam finds himself navigating Hong’s trademark gauntlet of awkward seductions, casual betrayals, and ghosts of girlfriends past.Read More »

Byungsoo, a film director who goes with his daughter Jeongsu an aspiring interior designer, to a building owned by an old friend already established in the design field. She gives them a tour of the property, which includes a restaurant and cooking studio on the first two floors, her office in the basement, a residence on the third floor, and an artist’s studio at the top. The three of them chat and drink amicably until a business call pulls Byungsoo away. When he returns, it’s the same place, but a different time, and the building owner invites him up to the second floor.Read More »

Synopsis:
A female novelist takes a long trip to visit a bookstore run by a younger colleague who has fallen out of touch. Then she goes up a tower on her own and runs into a film director and his wife. They take a walk in a park and meet an actress, after which the novelist tries to convince the actress to make a film with her. She and the actress get something to eat, then revisit the bookstore where a group of people are drinking. The actress gets drunk and falls asleep.Read More »

On impulse, a young woman drives from Seoul to see her best friend, but also meets up with her older professor, and then a former lover. Drinks ensue, and surprises are revealed for all four characters. Hong packs a lot into a 31 minute film.Read More »

The first snow has fallen over Seoul. Munho, a young art professor, is catching up with his friend Hunjoon, a broke filmmaker who has just returned from the United States. After a few drinks, they decided to track down Sunhwa, a young girl they were both in love with a few years earlier.Read More »

Quote:
She manages her daily life with a sense of mindfulness while keeping a grave secret to herself, and she decides to meet with a younger director who asked her to join his project, and after they meet there is sudden rainfall and thunder.Read More »