“The writer, her film and a happy coincidence” in cinema – culture

The writer meets the owner, an old friend, in front of a bookstore in a suburb of Seoul. It’s cold outside, so they have another coffee in the shop. Nobody has anything special to do. The bookseller’s assistant sits down with them. A specialist in sign language. The writer (Lee Hyeyoung), who hasn’t published anything for a long time, pretends to be very interested.

The young woman draws a sentence in the air: “The day is still light, but it will soon be dark. Let’s go for a walk while it’s still light.” The writer repeats the complex gestures with a smile, like someone who has just learned a new game but has not yet mastered the rules. Then she puts the sentence into practice, lets actions follow the signs. She’s going for a walk while it’s still light, and along the way she’ll have a few more encounters that create a wonderfully comical plot.

A writer, a few lucky coincidences and later a few bottles of alcohol: That’s all the South Korean master Hong Sang-soo needs to make a film that is as simple as it is complex, accessible as it is ambivalent. “The Writer, Her Film and a Happy Coincidence” won the jury prize in this year’s Berlinale competition, another of countless awards that the sixty-two-year-old filmmaker has collected at major international festivals over the course of his career.

Since 1996, Hong has directed more than thirty films. Two were published this year alone, in addition to the “author” and “walk up”, both of which were created during the pandemic. In doing so, he constantly varies the everydayness of situations and the possibilities that arise from them, which are primarily dialogues, while minimalism determines the form. It is almost always filmed in long, uncut shots. Here the picture is also black and white, which filters reality and reduces it to the essentials, making the comedy particularly clear and transparent.

His artist figures do not create works. You are busy with life

Again and again, filmmakers are the central figures of Hong’s stories, artists and intellectuals, who, however, unlike in many European films, do not express or create anything artistically or intellectually valuable because they are far too busy with something else: life , its crises, its coincidences. Coincidentally, the writer meets another former acquaintance on her walk, a director (Kwon Haehyo). He was supposed to film one of her novels, but nothing came of it, investors jumped out.

After some polite banter, the writer makes explicit allegations: she’s pissed off about the failed project. She later meets a young actress (Kim Minhee) at the park, who turns out to be a fan of hers. The writer persuades the young woman to make a film with her. Then the two end up back at the bookstore, where the writer has another encounter with her past while everyone drinks heavily and talks some more.

If you want to describe the actions of Hong’s films or remember a “plot”, you will find that, despite the simplicity of the events, the words slip through your fingers, the picture blurs like the memory of a night of drinking, yourself the connections dissolve like lightning insights in a dream, which are soon forgotten again after waking up.

Because nobody is ever filmed at work or a specific activity, only while talking (and drinking). And even then, we don’t learn anything about the filmmaker’s films or the writer’s books. But the less we learn, the funnier it gets. Because as the schnapps consumption increases, the characters tell each other more and more uninhibitedly how much they all admire each other. And because they can’t help but intensively discuss the question to which the writer refuses to answer: what exactly is the film supposed to be about?

Hong now works like a completely independent, autonomously working writer. He writes the screenplay for his films, directs them, is his own cameraman, does the editing and even composes the music. It is then shot in a small circle with regular actors, including Kim Minhee in particular, with a small budget and in a short time: This great little film was made in just two weeks. Hong writes the dialogue on the fly, lively and fresh. In this way we can follow exactly how the events are being invented from scene to scene, sentence to sentence on the screen, ideas and words constantly evolving through associations.

The basic motif running through Hong’s work is the encounter between characters who meet again or get to know each other. It is often not clear which of the two is involved. In many of his films, the plot takes ramifications in time without us being able to decide: Does one scene follow the other? Or is it a variation on the previous one, an alternate reality?

“The Writer …” is laid out in a more linear and classic way, and perhaps that’s exactly why it’s a good introduction to his work for those who don’t know Hong’s work yet. In his films only the surface counts, but the surface remains wonderfully ambivalent. That a writer of all people wants to make a film is as obvious (why not?) as it is strange (why the change of media?). It may be revenge against the director, or a whim. The truth has been redeemed from all depth and gravity in the cinema of the ingenious South Korean. That doesn’t mean she’s absent. She is everywhere.

So-seol-ga-ui yeong-hwa, South Korea 2022. – Director, Script, Camera, Editing, Music: Hong Sang-soo. With Lee Hyeyoung, Kim Minhee, Kwon Haehyo. Grand film, 92 minutes. Theatrical release: November 10, 2022.

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