Just as Hong-Sang Soo had gotten into a groove of making his films so funny that I began expecting each successive one to be a little funnier than the last, than the inventive, prolific Korean writer-director switches up on me. That’s not to say that Oki’s Movie doesn’t have its share of laughs, but on the whole it’s more poignant and puzzling than the two prior recent pictures of his that I’ve seen, the film-festival romp Like You Know It All (Hong’s answer to Stardust Memories, and quite a bit funnier and more humane, I thought, than Woody Allen’s oft-admirable but equally oft-problematic original), and the near epic Paris-set romantic shamble Night and Day, which I reviewed for the site then known as The Auteurs a couple years back. (I have not yet caught up with another new feature, Hahaha. This guy’s got a real work ethic!)
Roman Polanski once remarked that he didn’t think there was ever such a thing as a love triangle, that such stories only ever had to do with two people, with the third acting as a sort of pretext to launch the narrative. If I recall correctly, he said this in reference, of course, to his own film Knife In The Water, and in that case he definitely had a point, but I’m not sure the generalization always holds. In any case, in the sort-of love triangle that gives Oki’s Movie what can finally be called its core, it’s definitely about either more than two people, or it’s about just one person, but it’s never about only the two. Oki’s Movie has an unusual shape. It kicks of with hand-written opening credits designed and shot in the manner of amateur video, with Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” as the theme music. This credit motif is repeated for each of the film’s four discrete sections. But are they sections or in fact individual short films? It’s difficult to say. We understand we’re in an academic environment in which films are made; there’s festival competition, a director’s Q&A (one of the most awkward director’s Q&A’s ever committed to a screen, in fact, and one of the film’s funniest scenes) rumors of tenure-mongering, and more. With the exception of the final section, the narration of which makes clear that it’s a film-within-a-film—or, more accurately, a film within the film-world of the characters involved, those being two student filmmakers, male and female, and a married professor—I wasn’t always on the surest footing as to the particular reality of each of the sections, at how far a remove from Hong the storyteller himself each particular section was set. Which is an entirely different proposition from being “hard to follow” but which also means I’m going to need to see the thing again before I “get” it.
Which isn’t to say that they’re aren’t a myriad of pleasures and perplexes to be enjoyed in the picture’s knotty 80 minutes. As in so many of Hong’s pictures, an alarming amount of alcohol is consumed, kissing and sex are impulsive and sloppy, melancholy observations on the state of modern filmmaking and modern romance are delivered in oft-irresistable quasi-hangdog deadpan, and so on. While Hong’s film’s are for the most part uncomfortably acute portraits of the emotional, intellectual, and sexual inadequacy of its male protagonists, here the filmmaker takes an interesting step forward and ends things by explicitly identifying with/taking on his female lead’s point of view—hence the title. It’s a bold move that pays off with an emotional impact of a sort that’s new to Hong’s work. Good stuff.
The public screenings of Oki’s Movie are preceded with the short All Flowers In Time, by Tarnation director Jonathan Caouette, a film which prompted me to remark to my companion, “David Lynch called. He wants David Lynch back.”
Hong’s short “Lost in the Mountains” from last year’s VISITORS omnibus (w/bits from Lav Diaz and Naomi Kawase) also has a female protagonist who, in a frankly terrific ending, asserts herself bluntly against two arguing examples of the *typical* Hong protag. Worth finding and checking out.
This is when film criticism serves it’s function in a Utopian fashion, when I read a review of a film that I wasn’t interested in based on the NYFF catalog description, but due to the writer’s take morphs into something I must see. Well played.
I liked this one a lot, Glenn. Regarding OKI’S MOVIE – the eponymously-named final section, specifically – were you reminded at all of the middle tale in Rohmer’s RENDEZVOUS IN PARIS? Given Hong’s film literacy, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a deliberate homage.
I was thinking about RENDEZVOUS IN PARIS, too, Jaime. And the four chapter structure of FOUR ADVENTURES OF REINETTE & MIRABELLE.
I’ll second Adam’s recommendation of LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS, which has a whole Hong feature’s worth of comedy and formal invention crammed into a half-hour.
I haven’t seen “Oki’s Movie” but I know that Hong gets the Rohmer comparison quite a lot. I’ve seen at least one Q&A with Hong (more likely 2, even 3) during which someone asks him if there’s a Rohmer influence – he almost shrugs/rolls his eyes, makes clear that he’s a big admirer of Rohmer, but says it’s certainly not a thing he’s consciously doing… He’s pretty cryptic, and not, it would seem, just because he’s speaking in English (I think he usually uses a translator).
Personally, I think after seeing the Paris movie I decided that however talented Hong is, I just can’t muster up the same enthusiasm I used to have for his work. It seems like he sort of crested with “Woman is the Future of Man” or perhaps “Woman on the Beach.” I guess I find myself always wishing/hoping he’ll do something different (i.e. outside of the milieu of frustrated Korean intellectuals/artists, total incomprehension between men and women, the alienation of the artist in society) – but he always does the same thing. I know, that’s not unusual for an artist (was it Joyce who said every writer just writes one book, and then re-writes it throughout the rest of his life, or something to that effect?) But for me, Hong’s repetition of theme and style has just gotten repetitive.
For my money, his best work remains some of the earlier films, particularly “Day the Pig Fell Into the Well” and “Power of Kangwon Province.” Oh, I also love “Turning Gate” quite a lot, too.
He may seem like he’s doing the same movie over and over. But he’s not. Which is in itself another thing he has in common with Rohmer. But you’re correct that it would probably take more enthusiasm to see this.
I guess for me the variations on a theme (i.e. the zooms, uhm, I’m drawing a blank on anything else; I guess the Parisian setting in Night and Day) in Hong’s work just isn’t that compelling for me anymore.
Have you or anyone else here seen any of Jeon Soo-Il’s work? I bring it up because he too seems pretty familiar with that academic/intellectual film studies world in Korea but is so obviously working in a different mode. There was a retrospective of his work early this year at UCLA that traveled a fair amount (I think to NYU, AFI in Washington, Canada)… Some of it is stunning, not always successful – but definitely a director whose work I’m intrigued by.
I’ve only seen one Hong feature to date (Woman is the Future of Man), so maybe I should just keep my peace until I explore more, but it was a film that irritated and intrigued me at the same time, and the more I hear about his work, the more interested I am in seeing some more of it. The one thing that irked me most in WIFM was the, as Donald says, total incomprehension between men and women. I couldn’t tell if it’s an aspect of Korean culture (surely that’s at least part of the story) or meant to be received with a pinch of salt or two – some kind of exaggerated comic affect. Really, though, it’s not just men and women – people in the movie (and in others, from what I’ve read) seem to be almost pathologically incapable of normal human interaction. I mean, how many awkward faux-pas moments can you cram into one exchange, never mind a whole movie? Is there something I’m missing here, or do I just need to see more?
I’d rather have my balls coated in honey and fire ants than to sit through another Hong Sang-soo movie. I stopped going to his NYFF screenings 2 movies ago.