Hong's perennial subject, already clear in his Tiger Award winner The Day a Pig Fell into the Well, is the way we delude and contradict ourselves in matters of love and/or lust. The more he thinks about it, the funnier he finds it. This time, his plot splits neatly down the middle. Out-of-work actor Kyung-Soo impulsively follows up a call from a one-time schoolmate by visiting him in Chuncheon, a country town famous for its lakes. There he has a brief fling with a dance instructor, who turns out to be his hapless host's girlfriend. Worried more by her protestations of love than by two timing his host, Kyung-Soo bolts. He takes a train and chats to Sun-Young, who recognises him from his stage work; he gets off at Kyungju to follow her home and next day propositions and beds her. Now Kyung-Soo is the one doing the begging - and Sun-Young has an answer which knocks him sideways. Amazingly, Hong wrote all this day-by-day during the filming. The result is not loose improvisation but plotting as intricate and detailed as anything you'd find in 19th-century fiction, a form explicitly evoked by the film's seven chapter titles. The two halves are riddled with echoes, parallels and reversals. And it's really funny. Tony Rayns
- Director
- Hong Sangsoo
- Country of production
- South Korea
- Year
- 2002
- Festival Edition
- IFFR 2003
- Length
- 115'
- Medium
- 35mm
- Original title
- Saeng-hwal-eui Bal-gyun
- Language
- Korean
- Producers
- Cinema Service Co., Ltd., Hanna Lee
- Sales
- Cinema Service Co., Ltd.