Wow. This is the most straightforward Hong film since The Day He Arrives, it has a two-part structure and occasional repetitive echoes, but it remains focused and direct in a manner he rarely goes for. The only distancing effect here is the one the audience brings with their likely awareness of the Korean tabloid coverage of Hong and Kim romance. As usual with Hong he is operating into the dual modes of his careful attention to the small time minutiae of his character’s interactions and the large demonstrative feeble-like quality of the tale his editing brings together about them. Here that means Kim Min-hee character has an inevitable destination on the beach at night alone as the title promises. Her…

[8]

"The man who asked the time, later on the window-washer...these guys popping up. Do you think that's Death?"

This was a question posed to me by The Perspicacious Shelly Kraicer, who has had the good fortune to see Hong's latest film twice. It's highly plausible, especially given the way the window-washer is just hovering on the balcony toward the end of the film, his task completed but staring into the hotel room like a creep. But what's more significant than the particular details is the fact that this is a question that can be legitimately posed in a Hong film. The man who for so long has drawn comparisons to Rohmer is now possibly incorporating elements of Buñuel or…

Early thoughts..

I never understood when Hong said he was more influenced by Cezanne than any other filmmaker, until now...

And even outside of its considerable formal/structural merits, this is personal filmmaking taken to an almost unparalleled degree of self-inquiry, both for its director and lead actress - it's perhaps necessary to be aware of the South Korean media circus surrounding Hong Sang-Soo and Kim Min-Hee's affair in 2015/6 to fully understand what is happening here...also because of this it seems more collaborative than HHS's prior efforts, lending itself to a sense of equality between performer and director which I haven't experienced before. Truly remarkable...I've always liked HHS but admittedly considered him a bit slight (but that was always his…

Bem a cara do Hong Sang-soo fazer o filme mais impiedoso da sua carreira justamente quando é pra tratar sem muitos rodeios da própria vida pessoal. Não que todos os outros já não fossem em algum nível sobre isso, mas aqui parece que o próprio espírito de Maurice Pialat deu uma assombrada gostosa no cara. Mesmo pra quem não tá ligado no relacionamento dele com a Kim Min-hee é um dos filmes mais desoladores nessa relação entre romance e isolamento, nessa culpa implícita que acaba destruindo todo círculo social possível. Tem uma desesperança tão franca, tão não hesitante e livre de qualquer projeção distanciadora que a única coisa que sobra é uma morbidez muito bruta. A própria figura que persegue…

60/100

A.V. Club review. Not particularly effective for me as cinema à clef—maybe I just know too much about Hong's personal life at the moment, but this film's uncharacteristic emotional directness feels vaguely secondhand, especially when his surrogate finally shows up. (I'd hoped that we'd never see the director at all, that he'd remain entirely past-tense.) But I'm immensely excited to see Hong experimenting with...I'm not sure whether to call it surrealism or absurdism or just inexplicable weirdness. It blows my mind that some critics (e.g. the usually perspicacious Guy Lodge in Variety) failed even to mention the recurring presence of a male figure wearing a dark coat and knit cap, who's first seen asking Young-hee for the time ("You…

There's a very intriguing flatness to the images here that I'm not sure I've seen before. The books on the shelf in a bookstore look like green screen; the beach at the end of (Part) I looks like a still photograph, and even after Young-hee enters the frame, her feet barely seem to make any impression on the sand (especially intriguing given what happens next). It's tempting to read this as Hong advising the viewer not to confuse the details of this film with real life.

The structural break between the two sections of this film almost seems like a rupture made in the hope of being able to avoid consequences and/or wait out repercussions (depending on the temporality of…

Hong bares his soul, but I honestly don't know enough to pass judgement. One thing I can say for sure is that both him and Min-hee understand the alienation that comes from attention—the awkwardly tip-toeing silences and lop-sided dialogue when somebody thinks they know you before you've even had a chance to know them—as well as the intense guilt of dragging somebody else into such an awful situation with you. I've only seen Right Now, Wrong Then, and the two adverbs may as well have just swapped places for this sequel. The film itself is rather simple, but it's so clearly built upon a dialogue held between two people that it feels as if I'm eavesdropping on a private conversation.…

Hong Sang-soo used to be really difficult for me, much like Ozu was. As I grew older, more patient, and dug deeper into my studies, I began to respect his questioning of what truly defines cinema and whether or not the slightest moments and the most simple of conversations could still be considered cinematic. This film is equally a study on the quotidian as it is on an taboo relationship that the non narrative is structured around, though occurred before the time of the film’s setting. I love that writing style, structuring your film around an event or a person that’s largely absent from the plot (Koreeda’s Still Walking is the best example of this technique, in my opinion!) It’s…