The new film by Hong Sang-soo comes Our Sunhi (우리 선희). This South Korean film written and directed by Hong Sang-soo. Sunhi graduated from college, majoring in film. In order to ask about a recommendation letter from Professor Choi to study in the US, she visits her university after a long time. Sunhi expects Professor Choi to give her a good recommendation letter because he likes her. She also meets two other men she knew: Moon-Soo, who just became a film director, and Jae-Hak, who is a well established film director.
Given the fact that the film is director Hong's fifteenth directorial effort, it is another great addition to director Hong's study on human relationships that has been synonymous to the director's career since his 1996 debut film The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (돼지가 우물에 빠진 날).
The film stars Jung Yu-mi, Kim Sang-joong, Lee Sun-kyun, Jung Jae-young, Lee Min-woo, and Ye Ji-won. The cast gave solid yet fleeting performances that fall right into director Hong Sang-soo's gallery of characters. The cast, like every other Hong Sang-soo cast, are tasked with portraying real Koreans living in modern South Korea. This can come off as both genuine and mundane. The film is not without its charm and three of the characters themselves being a film student, a film professor and filmmaker explicitly aids its thematic concern with the struggle between the ways we represent ourselves and the ways we truly behave.
As always with Hong's films, Our Sunhi goes through stretches where it seems aimless and self-indulgent, followed by stretches where it's sharp, funny, and poetic. A curious oddity worthy of multiple viewings and lengthy contemplation, but its tricky formalism makes it less overtly satisfying on an emotional level. Director Hong's casually brilliant feat of storytelling, akin to an ingeniously wrought suite of literary short fiction. You'll find yourself wanting to immediately go back to the beginning and reassess every conversation, every gesture, every long-held grudge. Hong Sang-soo once again corroborates auteurist theory at the same time that he reveals the potential shortcomings of its practice. Through a series of vignettes that keep moving backward in time as the narrative progresses, Hong coldly addresses the increasingly fragile love story between a film student and her professor. If the characterizations are fleeting, the recessive mood is not: Hong's signature observational style is at once offhanded and astute, romantic and lightly chilled. There is nonetheless a feeling of having completed the routines the film has set out and, perhaps, achieved a sort of understanding. Happily, the film not only sustains the pertinence of Hong's cinema but refracts it through an extra-cinematic device. The film's original and clever premise, charming execution and memorable performances come together beautifully to create a picture that's both captivating and emotional. Here is another opportunity to acquire a taste for director Hong Sang-soo, or having acquired it, to cultivate it.
Simon says Our Sunhi (우리 선희) receives:
No comments:
Post a Comment