With over 30 films to his name, Hong Sangsoo is considered one of the most established auteurs in contemporary Korean cinema, renowned for his unique cinematic language and distinctive aesthetic. His oeuvre blends humour with profound explorations of everyday life, psychology, and metaphysics in subtle and elegant ways.
This collection, spanning more than a decade of the director’s recent work (2011-2022), offers a unique insight into Hong Sangsoo’s artistic vision and practice. Playfully intertwining themes of desire, deception, love and regret, these four films trace an ever-subtly changing pattern of variations on the same narrative threads, inviting the viewer to new ways of seeing and thinking.
A film director who no longer makes films arrives in Seoul to meet a close friend. When the friend doesn’t show up, he wanders the city for three days, drinking and meeting a series of women, each day playing out like a variation of the last.
Film director Ham Chunsu arrives in Suwon a day too early and meets young painter Yoon Heejung. They spend the day visiting her studio, drinking soju and meeting her friends, in a fragile game of attraction, until things turn sour. And then everything starts again.
While at the Cannes Film Festival, Manhee, a young film sales assistant, is abruptly fired by her boss due to unspecified “dishonesty”. When she meets Claire, a teacher with a Polaroid camera that may hold unusual powers, the two try to make sense of Manhee’s firing.
Accompanied by his daughter, film director Byungsoo visits an old friend in her four-storey building. After a phone call pulls Byungsoo away, he returns to the same place – only now it is a different time, and a higher floor.