The Day He Arrives

Black and white, 35 mm
South Korea, 2011, 79 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Seong-jun has made four films, but he now teaches at a small secondary school outside Seoul. He travels to the capital to pay a visit to a close friend. When the latter doesn’t answer his calls, he starts wandering aimlessly around the city; he visits an ex-girlfriend, meets another friend, film critic Young-ho, he comes across a group of youngsters and has a drink with them. In the evening he always ends up in a bar called Novel, where he chats about life, relationships and work with Young-ho, Bo-ram, who teaches film, and bar owner Ye-jeon. One of Korea’s best known and most original directors, Hong Sang-soo employs a light touch, detached insight and a sizeable dose of humour to comment not only on the film environment, which he knows inside out, but also on our attempts to give meaning to entirely random episodes in our lives. The immediacy of the acting performances and the film’s vague sense of time (certain scenes and dialogues recur in cycles) render it an interesting counterpart to the work by American director Richard Linklater, Before Sunset.

About the director

Hong Sang-soo (b. 1960, Seoul) gained renown for his feature debut The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996). This was followed by The Power of Kangwon Province (1998) and Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000). These three films were screened in Karlovy Vary in the section Forum of Independents. Hong Sang-soo has written and directed more than ten films, all of which were highly acclaimed at various international festivals, such as Cannes (Woman Is the Future of Man, 2004; A Tale of Cinema, 2005; Like You Know It All, 2009; Hahaha, 2010) and Venice (Oki’s Movie, 2010). The film which competed in Berlin, Night and Day (2008), was also screened in the Horizons section at KVIFF in 2008. The film The Day He Arrives was screened this year at Cannes.