The movie
Show notes
Hong Sang-soo’s wry film about a novelist who decides to make a short movie is a clever illustration of the Korean filmmaker’s own narrative methods. I’ve had occasion before to praise the work of Korean writer and director Hong San-soo. He’s unusual in that he’s artistically modest (always doing small scale films about ordinary life) yet incredibly prolific (31 features in the last 27 years, including 15 in the last 10, and a few shorter films). Rather than trying to get financed by the big companies, he proposes an idea for a film to friends in the movie industry who can help fun modestly budgeted films. Over the years, he’s stopped writing screenplays, and instead works from little scraps of story and dialogue that then expand as he shoots, with the help of some improvisation from his actors. One of his recent films from last year (amazingly, he’s released three since then) is called The Novelist’s Film , and it’s arguably his most self-referential, in that it cleverly hints at his own creative process through its minimalist story. Lee Hye-yeong plays Junhee, a moderately successful novelist who travels outside of Seoul to visit, unannounced, an old friend that runs a bookstore. Her friend is surprised and happy to see her, but at the same time we can sense some underlying tension. Junhee sought her fortune in the big city while her friend let go of her writing ambitions to sell books and stay within the comfort of a smaller circle. The author tends to be rather blunt; at one point she comments that her friend has gained weight since she last saw her. Later her friend says that she hasn’t read Junhee’s latest novel because now she only chooses books that she wants to read rather than those she’s supposed to read. This seems funny in recollection, but in the moment it plays as plain and matter-of-fact, like everything else in the movie. Hong has made a film composed almost entirely of small talk, and in high contrast black & white to make things seem as mundane as
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