MIFF Session #5: THE NOVELIST'S FILM

An elegant novelist, Jun-hee, waits outside a bookshop, finishing her vape before she goes in. The manager emerges, greeting Jun-hee as an old friend. They have a conversation about how they've drifted and their careers. The manager invites her in for tea and the assistant shows the writer some of the sign language she's learned before the writer repeats the phrase she's asked for several times until she has it. Afterwards, they stroll to the new building and take their leave. Jun-hee rides the lift of the building and uses the pay telescope until someone who recognises her approaches her, they have a chat until the newcomer's husband, a film director (who has been hiding at the sight of Jun-hee) and the conversation is pleasantly awkward. They have coffee and ....

This is a Hong Sang-soo film, and like all of his others, is a kind of Kurbickian comedy of manners in which a few insubmersible units are set in a sequence that ends with a hint. The chance encounters keep coming, there's makgeolli by the bottle and takeaway on the table and everyone gets drunk. Jun-hee berates the film director (who had rejected her screenplay the last time they had anything to do with each other: that's why he was hiding) for shaming the film actor they meet in the park for wasting her youth. Jun Hee decides she wants to make a film herself with the actor, Gill-soo which happens and which we partially see.

Jun-hee's idea for the film is very like a Hong film; a beautiful young woman in the park talking about beauty and nature. What's missing is the arch dialogue and humour of awkwardness played in static setups that might be from silent cinema. We might take a moment to notice it, with the dialogue ramping up, but Director Park's wife is so annoyed and restless by the conversation in which her husband is been slammed that she slowly twists away from it until she resembles an op shop mannequin. When Jun-hee are talking over food at a diner a young girl arrives at the window and stares at Gill-soo, clearly a fan. They notice her but she moves on. Then, she's back with the same possessed stare. Gill-soo gets up and exits to talk to her. We don't hear a word of their conversation but we can make it up for ourselves. Finally, after the probable only screening of the titular novelist's film everyone is a little numb and alone. But we aren't.

Hong's extraordinary output has him release about two feature films per year (MIFF usually has the latest two) and I try to make each one. While the above might suggest there is a sameness  to them it is due more to the difficulty of explaining their qualities rather than any genuine uniformity. Hong is fascinated by what happens in spoken communication, its bright declarations and veiled purposes and all in between and beyond. Most are delivered in his native Korean but when he has the opportunity to add languages he takes the opportunity for ever more rarefied fun. With this he returns to the basics and provides more of why we who are fans locked on to him in the first place. It doesn't feel like treading old ground as much as finding more detail in it.