The 54-year old Hong Sang-Soo (홍상수), a filmmaker for nearly 20 years, has taken Korean arthouse film–the trendy, day-to-day social life, chain-smoking conversations over soju–to a new level.  His films have been highly regarded at international film festivals, including the Cannes Film Festival (considered to be the gold standard for independent film awards), where he won the grad prize in the “Un Certain Regard” category in 2010 for Ha Ha Ha (하하하).  Just two years ago, in 2013, at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland, Hong won the prestigious Silver Leopard Award for Best Director for Our Sunhi (우리 선희).  In short, when looking to understand Korean film, Hong Sang-soo is a name and work to know.

Friendships and social life in Korea can be a very close knit part of society.  From mountain climbing to hours in a cafe to the practically mandatory post-work dinners and drinks with the supervisors, every day relationships are essential, perhaps more so than most countries.  It’s a style fit for artistic film (no doubt influence by the French New Wave of the 1960s and 70s), which Hong, a Seoul-native, is a true craftsman (as if the awards weren’t enough validation).  Perhaps the best of his work can be seen in 2010, when he filmed both Oki’s Movie (옥희의 영화) and Ha Ha Ha.

Hong Sang-soo sticks with the cinematic formula that brought him success the last time he had success in the Mediterranean.  The prominent Korean film director’s follow-up film to his Cannes success was chosen as the closing film for the Venice Film Festival that year (2010).  It follows a concept similar to his film Ha Ha Ha.

Oki’s Movie is made up of four parts and three main characters.  The central character is a film student, Jung (played by Jung Yu-mi, who is also in Hong’s Our Sunhi).  In the fourth part, she makes a movie about an older and younger man she dated.  When dating these men, she went to the same mountain with each of them—one year apart.  The movie parallels each aspect of the trip to the mountain, comparing each experience, each place, each moment.  Her relationship is what brings together the film’s first three parts.

The first part, The Day Of Incantation주문을 외울, is set during winter in present day Seoul.  Oki’s “younger man”, Nam (played by Sun-kyun Lee 이선균, also in Hong’s well-received 2008 film Night and Day 밤과 낮), quarrels after a few drinks with the “older man”, Professor Song, who said previously in class that filmmaking is a dead art.  [Note: it is quite common for undergraduate students to go for dinner and drinks with their professors.]

In the second part, King of Kisses (키스왕), Nam and Jung meet, and Jung tells him she is getting over a relationship with an older man.  However, this doesn’t deter Nam, and they sleep together and begin dating.

The third part, After the Snowstorm (폭설 후), brings the three together: Nam, Jung, and Prof. Song.  Nam and Jung are the only two students to show up for Prof. Song’s class, and the three talk about relationships.

Hong uses a similar narrative in Ha Ha Ha.  The Cannes winner depicts two men–one a filmmaker and the other a film critic–recounting a trip to the same coastal town during a night of drinking.  Both had gone with separate groups, to the same exact places, at the same exact time.  The memory sequences, the time and place parallels, are how the characters and the audience piece together the importance of an ordinarily small moment in life.