Sang-soo Hong

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 »

After years of living abroad, a middle-aged former actress (Lee Hye-young) has returned to South Korea to reconnect with her past and perhaps make amends. Over the course of one day in Seoul, via various encounters—including with her younger sister; a shopkeeper who lives in her converted childhood home; and, finally, a well-known film director with whom she would like to make a comeback—we discover her resentments and regrets, her financial difficulties, and the big secret that’s keeping her aloof from the world. Both beguiling and oddly cleansing in its mix of the spiritual and the cynical, In Front of Your Face finds the endlessly prolific Hong Sang-soo in a particularly contemplative mood; it’s a film that somehow finds that life is at once full of grace and a sick joke.Read More »

Youngho is summoned by his father, who is a doctor. Finding him busy with his patients, one of whom is a famous actor, Youngho has to wait. When his girlfriend Juwon moves to Berlin for her studies, Youngho shows up in the city to surprise her. Through her mother, Juwon has found accommodation at the home of an artist whose beauty intimidates her. Some time later, Youngho goes to lunch with his mother who wants to introduce him to a colleague – it is the same man Youngho met at his father’s clinic. Youngho asks his friend Jeongsoo to accompany him, and after lunch they go to the beach. Youngho falls asleep, and dreams of Juwon. When he wakes up, he braves the considerable cold and goes swimming, while Jeongsoo watches.Read More »

Quote:
Shot in murky black and white, Hong’s film traverses an open-air spectrum of repeating nuances, locations, and dialogue in charming ways. The small groups of characters, including mildly famous film director Sungjoon (Yu Jun-sang), who’s visiting an old friend in Seoul, graze on the coincidences and human fallibilities defining their overlapping mental quirks. Together, they’re like lost sheep roaming the urban academic landscape for a shepherd.Read More »

Quote:
In Seoul, the paths of two men and one woman intersect and move apart from one another, centering around their love for cinema. A suicidal student meets a young woman who decides to follow him in his fatal gesture. Coming out of a cinema, Tongsu, an unsuccessful filmmaker, spots a beautiful young woman, and recognizes her : she is the main actress in the film he has just seen. The life of this wavering and distressed young man strangely echoes the one of the young man from the beginning…Read More »