A movie director entices his young friend to come to the beach on the pretext of writing a script. He then starts an affair with the friend's girlfriend.
"Night and Day" is centered around the mixed emotions found in traveling. Characters in the film are Sung-nam Kim, an artist selected by the Korean government that escaped from Seoul and ... See full summary »
A professor in the film department at a provincial university goes to Seoul to meet his senior, who works as a film critic, and stays in a northern Seoul village for three days.
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 ... See full summary »
Relationship filled with pitfalls between a pleasant female video producer and a gallery owner as they become embroiled in their self-spun web of illusions. Bitter-sweet serenade to modern courtship.
Two college friends get together and reminisce on the woman they both fell in love with at different times in their past, and are thus propelled to find her.
Actor Kyung Soo leaves Seoul to visit an old classmate. The reunion with his friend does not amount to much, but the trip does lead to some romantic encounters. He gets involved with two ... See full summary »
A movie director entices his young friend to come to the beach on the pretext of writing a script. He then starts an affair with the friend's girlfriend.
Hong Sang-Soo reminds me a lot of Eric Rohmer, which seems to be a comparison many have made before. But I would definitely rank him quite below Rohmer. I've seen four films by Hong now. I liked the first one I saw, Woman Is the Future of Man, a lot, but the other two, besides the one about which I'm currently writing, I only barely recall. Woman on the Beach seems far too similar to Woman Is the Future of Man for me to like it a lot. I didn't hate it, by any means, though I did eventually grow tired of it. I liked the initial conflict, where a man brings along a woman whom he thinks of as his girlfriend on a trip with a film director friend of his. The director is kind of a jerk, and the girl is immediately attracted to him – either that, or she is so bothered by the meek guy that she just wants to spurn him. Later on, she discovers that the director's jerkiness is a pretty clear character trait. Well, duh. Much as I remember from Woman Is the Future of Man, Hong's major insight seems to be that men (particularly film directors) are jerks, and that women like jerks, but also think they can change them. It's a pretty trite observation, really, and, in the end, kind of hateful toward both sexes. It doesn't help that the woman becomes a completely jealous shrew. If I'm remembering correctly, I liked the woman of Woman Is the Future of Man much better. She seemed, in the end, better and stronger than the men in her life.
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Hong Sang-Soo reminds me a lot of Eric Rohmer, which seems to be a comparison many have made before. But I would definitely rank him quite below Rohmer. I've seen four films by Hong now. I liked the first one I saw, Woman Is the Future of Man, a lot, but the other two, besides the one about which I'm currently writing, I only barely recall. Woman on the Beach seems far too similar to Woman Is the Future of Man for me to like it a lot. I didn't hate it, by any means, though I did eventually grow tired of it. I liked the initial conflict, where a man brings along a woman whom he thinks of as his girlfriend on a trip with a film director friend of his. The director is kind of a jerk, and the girl is immediately attracted to him – either that, or she is so bothered by the meek guy that she just wants to spurn him. Later on, she discovers that the director's jerkiness is a pretty clear character trait. Well, duh. Much as I remember from Woman Is the Future of Man, Hong's major insight seems to be that men (particularly film directors) are jerks, and that women like jerks, but also think they can change them. It's a pretty trite observation, really, and, in the end, kind of hateful toward both sexes. It doesn't help that the woman becomes a completely jealous shrew. If I'm remembering correctly, I liked the woman of Woman Is the Future of Man much better. She seemed, in the end, better and stronger than the men in her life.