ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE (Hong Sang-soo, 2017)

Yesterday the latest film from Hong Sang-soo opened wide here in Seoul (although with only one screening, at Emu Art Space, with English subtitles), coming off its win for Best Actress at the Berlin film festival last month. Normally, this release would be of interest only to a small group of people interested in Hong and/or art cinema more generally, but this time the controversy over Hong's affair with lead actress Kim Min-hee has led to a much larger popular interest, although we'll still have to see the ultimate box office numbers. As a long-time admirer of Hong's movies, I'm glad for the increased exposure, and the film itself is overall quite strong, although, as I'll discuss, I think the ending is rather misjudged.

(Spoilers ahead)

First, some aspects of the film I really loved. Kim Min-hee's performance is excellent, and Hong certainly benefits from having such a magnetic presence fill his movie. She is present in almost every scene, and combines the movie star glamour the role needs with an ability to convey deeper emotions and internal conflicts, a quality she also displayed in her previous Hong collaboration, Right Now, Wrong Then. Also, I find Hong is often at his best with a strong female protagonist, and this is one of his few films with a clear female lead, as well as a number of strong actresses in supporting roles. The typical Hong males are still around, but much more at the margins.

On the Beach At Night Alone is also, as one may guess from the title, considerably darker and more disturbing than Hong's more recent work and harkens back more to his earlier films in its tone. As has been often noted in early reviews, the movie clearly addresses the recent scandal of Hong's personal life, and this real-life context cannot help but impact the viewing experience. However, Hong has been making this story, of an older married man and his relationship with a younger woman, for many years now. Ironically, the relationship between Hong and Kim Min-hee is far less problematic than the professor-student transgressions of the earlier narratives. The scandal is not so much the adultery itself, but its acknowledgment. That said, because the film concentrates on the female perspective, there is a greater melancholy and even menace to the work. Hong includes a few surrealistic touches, as he often does, much as a man whose presence on the character's balcony is never really explained, but here the effect is not simply comic but more unsettling. This is compounded by the many references to death in the dialogue, particularly one sequence in which Younghee (Kim Min-hee) discusses facing her life's inevitable conclusion in words that seem much closer to those of an older man like Hong himself, who has suffered health problems in recent years. All of this combines to give the movie an emotional resonance often missing from his more recent. works.

My main objection to the movie is a long final sequence in which Younghee and the director whom she had an affair (played by Hong veteran and frequent surrogate Moon Sung-keun) finally meet. We have heard this character discussed throughout, and I think Hong makes a mistake in having the character appear (even if it is, we see, most likely a dream). Not that Hong necessarily uses the character to justify himself; the depiction is rather critical and pathetic, although there is a fine line between self-critique and narcissism. The problem is that the character works far better as an absence, an almost Godot-like figure whom we never meet. The movie is much more interesting because it is about the female perspective, and the intrusion of the character, even if it is in her sub-conscious, is an unfortunate reversal of that emphasis.

That major objection aside, this is a very good film and one I'm anxious to revisit, perhaps again in the next week. It is showing at Emu until at least next Wednesday, 3:30 on Saturday and Sunday (part of a whole day of Kim Min-hee films, all subtitled), and 6:40 Monday-Wednesday.