Winter’s Night

In the taxi back – after visiting the famous Buddhist temple of Cheongpyeongsa in the South Korean town Chuncheon, which they had also visited 30 years ago at the start of their relationship – a middle-aged woman tells her husband she’s lost her mobile phone. He reluctantly asks the taxi driver to turn back. What follows is a long, ice-cold, alcohol-fuelled night in which the couple – both separately and together – have a series of sobering, confrontational and disillusioning encounters set against waterfalls and neon-lit snow landscapes. The woman shares her sorrow with a young couple, whose budding love looks very much like theirs thirty years ago.

The young South Korean director Jang Woojin captures the languishing love of disillusioned fifty-somethings Eun-ju (Seo Young-hwa) and Heung-ju (Yang Heung-ju) in very precise shots. With the charming, melancholy and meditative Winter’s Night, he thoroughly realises the promise of A Fresh Start (2014) and Autumn, Autumn (2016).