Cannes 2010: Must-See List (Top 25)

Sin haber explorado todos los títulos ni sus respectivas fichas técnicas ni sinopsis ni nada por el estilo (son las cosas que suelo hacer en el avión, mientras viajo), tengo la impresión de que las 25 películas que más me intrigan ver en Cannes -para bien o para mal- son las que están aquí abajo.

Sin duda podría sumar varias más (logro ver 35 o más pelis por festival), pero entre las que tendré que ver aún sin tener ganas (todas las de Competencia que no figuran acá, más alguna fuera de competencia como la de Woody Allen, por ejemplo) y los típicos choques de horarios entre películas, películas y entrevistas, películas y escribir, me parece que aquí hay un paquete interesante y abarcable. Ahí vamos:

Aclaración: no cuento las películas argentinas porque ya las vi las tres.

25.- La casa muda, de Gustavo Hernández (Uruguay) El chistecito de la película de horror casera filmada con una cámara de fotos no me produce ningún tipo de entusiasmo (bizarro, nerd) ni hiperventilación extra, pero igual me intriga saber de qué va la cosa. Bienvenida toda la info de los que sepan más de la peli... Quincena de Realizadores

24.- Another Year, de Mike Leigh (Gran Bretaña) El cada vez más resistido (por no decir odiado, al menos por estos pagos) cineasta inglés, a mí todavía me genera cierta curiosidad. Happy-Go-Lucky era intrigante e irritante a la vez. Veremos qué pasa con esta. Competencia oficial.

23.- Stones in Exile, de Stephen Kijak (Gran Bretaña) Ningún misterio por acá, pura curiosidad de ver un docu sobre la mítica grabación del igualmente mítico Exile On Main St. Y con los Stones ahí habrá, sin dudas, un condimento extra. Quincena de Realizadores

22.- Blue Valentine, de Derek Cianfrance (EE.UU.) No tengo mucho para decir sobre esta peli que viene muy bien recomendada desde Sundance: historia de una pareja, con Ryan Gosling y Michelle Williams. Pago por ver. Un Certain Regard

21.- Biutiful, de Alejandro González Iñárritu (España-México) Creo que la mayoría de la gente que lee este blog sabe que "el Negro" Iñárritu no está entre mis cineastas favoritos y estoy siendo amable. Igual, me intriga ver qué pasa sin "la mano" de Guillermo Arriaga en los guiones. ¿Será, igual, más de lo mismo? ¿O la separación la habrá ayudado? Competencia oficial

20.- Les amours imaginaires, de Xavier Dolan (Canadá) No vi, aunque la tengo por ahí, su primera peli ("Maté a mi madre"), pero por las imágenes, el trailer y el estilo que parece tener su peli (muy "Nouvelle Vague", con algo de Christoph Honoré), voy a ponerle unas fichas a este canadiense de 21 años. Un Certain Regard

19.- La nostra vita, de Daniele Luchetti (Italia) No vi, aunque lo haré en estos días, Mi hermano es hijo único, pero este ex asistente de Nanni Moretti me intriga al punto de querer recuperar su obra previa (si alguien sabe donde conseguirla, avise) y lo que vi de la nueva (el trailer, nada más) pinta bien. Me intriga también, hablando de cine italiano, la de Michelangelo Frammartino, en la Quincena. Competencia oficial.

18.- Shit Year, de Cam Archer (EE.UU.) Porque sí, porque me gusta el título. ¿Hace falta más? En una sección con muchas operas primas y segundas pelis como es este año la Quincena habrá que jugarse a partir de "corazonadas". Y por lo que leí de su primer filme (Wild Tigers I Have Known), que no vi, el segundo me genera curiosidad. Quincena de Realizadores.

17.- Tuesday, After Christmas, de Radu Muntean (Rumania) Su anterior película, Boogie, la vi en la Quincena hace dos años y me encantó. No pasó gran cosa con ella ni tuvo la repercusión de otros títulos de su país, pero me basta como punto de referencia. Un Certain Regard

16.- Tournée, de Mathieu Amalric (Francia) Vi Le Stade de Wimbledon, en Mar del Plata, hace ya muchos años y me sorprendió gratamente. Como director, Amalric trabaja en otra órbita que como actor (no mejor ni peor, sólo que tiene un estilo muy personal y muy poco comercial) y su elección para la competencia me hace pensar que puede tratarse de un relativo "descubrimiento". También me intriga la de Xavier Beauvois, pero se me quedó afuera de la lista. Los otros franceses (Tavernier, Bouchareb) me motivan poco. Competencia oficial

15.- Fair Game, de Doug Liman (EE.UU.) Me encantan las historias sobre escándalos de la CIA, filtraciones periodísticas y la de Valerie Plame (Link) es una de las más interesantes de los últimos años. Liman dirigió la primera peli de la serie Bourne (pero también las flojas Sr. y Sra. Smith y Jumper) y en el elenco está Sean Penn y Naomi watts. Suficiente para mí. Competencia oficial.

14.- The Housemaid, de Im Sang-soo (Corea) No soy muy fanático de las remakes, y menos de hacer una sobre la película que es considerada como una de las mejores, sino la mejor, de la historia de Corea. Pero Im es un cineasta que ha hecho varias buenas películas (A Good Lawyer's Wife, The President's Last Bang) y, con un gran elenco (la "mucama pirucha" la encarna la actriz de Secret Sunshine, Jeon Do-Yeon), la cosa puede funcionar bastante bien. Y la trama de la original --que vi a través de The Auteurs y es increíble-- promete una película zarpada... Competencia oficial

13.- Boxing Gym, de Frederick Wiseman (EE.UU.) Se explica sola, ¿no? Quincena de Realizadores.

12.- O estranho caso de Angélica, de Manoel de Oliveira (Portugal) No soy un incondicional del centenario realizador portugués, pero en los últimos tiempos viene exhibiendo cierta ligereza de estilo que me interesa más que lo que venía haciendo, bueno, cuando era nonagenario. Se ve que después de los 100 años pasan cosas... Aparentemente es una película que quiso hacer en 1952 y no pudo. Era muy joven entonces, tenía 43, 44. Un Certain Regard

11.- You, My Joy, de Sergei Loznitsa (Rusia) También, años atrás, Pablo Mazzola programaba documentales en Mar del Plata y me insistía: "Tenés que ver las pelis de este tipo". Fui, medio porque no había nada mucho mejor para hacer, y tenía razón: los documentales, cortos en su mayoría, de SL, eran bastante impactantes. Portrait, Landscape, Factory. Ahora, con su primer filme de ficción, la historia de un camionero que se pierde por las rutas de Rusia y termina en un pueblito, aparece en los primeros planos del cine mundial. ¿Será la nueva Tulpan? Digo, porque entre Loznitsa y Dvortsevoy hay bastantes puntos en común... Competencia oficial

10.- Rebecca H., de Lodge Kerrigan (EE.UU.) Soy un acérrimo fan de Kerrigan (especialmente de su anterior película, Keane) y me parece uno de los cineastas más subvaluados de toda la movida indie norteamericana de los '90 a la que él aportó con la intensísima Clean, Shaven. Esta peli parece ser una biografía de Grace Slick, la cantante de Jefferson Airplaine. ¿Será exactamente así? Un Certain Regard

9.- Certified Copy, de Abbas Kiarostami (Francia-Italia-Irán) ¿En qué andará Don Abbas? Luego de cimentar una posición como el gran autor de cine iraní se fue corriendo de lugar cada vez más apostando por la experimentación. Ahora, de golpe, pega un aparente giro de 180° y arma una coproducción europea con actores franceses e italianos (Juliette Binoche, etc.) que me genera tanta curiosidad como miedo. Por algún motivo la imagino la decepción del festival. Espero equivocarme... Competencia oficial

8.- Film Socialisme, de Jean-Luc Godard (Francia) Toda nueva película de JLG es un evento, y más en Cannes, donde la sola mención de su nombre hace babear a personas serias y adultas. La peli la pueden ver, casi, en el trailer, en el que aparentemente se la pasa entera en un super acelerado fast-forward. Y qué decir... se ve de puta madre. Un Certain Regard

7.- Outrage, de Takeshi Kitano (Japón) Todo el mundo la vende como el regreso al mundo de los gángsters de sus primeros filmes. Y, seamos honestos, más allá de que nos gusten más o menos sus últimas películas (yo creo que algunas son brillantes, o al menos tienen momentos brillantes), todos estamos esperando el regreso de los yakuza y de Beat Takeshi. ¿Recuperará la magia de aquellos primeros tres filmes? Competencia oficial

6- Des filles en noir, de Jean-Paul Civeyrac (Francia) Estas es una apuesta, como quien dice. Un par de películas vistas, creo, en el BAFICI (creo haber visto alguna en Mar del Plata también, pero no estoy seguro) me hace ponerle ciertas fichas a este nombre algo oculto del nuevo cine francés cuyos temas suelen girar alrededor del amor y la muerte. Son apuestas, claro. Pueden fallar, como decían por ahí. Quincena de Realizadores

5.- Poetry, de Lee Chang-dong (Corea) El realizador y ex ministro de Cultura de Corea me confunde. Ha hecho películas que adoro (Green Fish, Peppermint Candy), otras que me fastidiaron (Oasis) y algunas, como Secret Sunshine, que me interesaron bastante Pero el trailer suena a melodrama coreano de los buenos. Y si hay un género que me puede (con el pianito, el lagrimón, la cancioncita final, todo) es ese. Competencia oficial

4.- Carlos, de Olivier Assayas (Francia). Una miniserie sobre Carlos "El Chacal" dirigida por Assayas suena como una curiosa pero muy ajustada combinación de sensibilidades. En los últimos tiempos (sin contar Las horas del verano, claro), Assayas venía haciendo diversos ensayos sobre el cine de espionaje internacional. Y este personaje se ajusta perfectamente a esa búsqueda. Son cinco horas y media... Espero no equivocarme Fuera de Competencia

3- Ha Ha Ha, de Hong Sang-soo (Corea) La pondría primera, claro, pero como ya sé que va a ser buena, ya se más o menos lo que va a pasar, ya se que la voy a disfrutar como todo su cine, mi expectativa tal vez sea menos grande que la de otros cineastas que suelen descolocarme un poco más. Igualmente, uno de los momentos que más espero en Cannes. Un Certain Regard

2.- Aurora, de Cristi Puiu (Rumania) Todos los que vimos La muerte del Sr. Lazarescu, la primera en hacer ruido y la mejor de todas las películas de la Nueva Ola Rumana, estábamos esperándola. Y llegó, finalmente, este segundo cuento de Puiu... También, tres horas. Llama la atención que no haya entrado en competencia, pero tal vez eso no sea necesariamente una mala noticia. Un Certain Regard

1.- Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, de Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Tailandia) Otra elección que no necesita mucha explicación. Aun si no vieron el cortometraje que parte de la misma "figura" del Tío Boonmee, la expectativa por cada nueva película del tailandés siempre es enorme. A mí, hasta ahora, jamás me decepcionó. Y no veo porque va a empezar a hacerlo ahora. Competencia oficial

Cannes 2010: Trailers de "Poetry", "Hahaha" y "Aurora"

Lee Chang Dong's "Poetry" (sin subtítulos)

Hong Sang-soo's "Hahaha" (sin subtítulos)

"Aurora", de Cristi Puiu (teaser, con subtítulos en inglés)

Entrevista a Hong Sang-soo (Light Sensitive)

By Patrick Z. Mc Gavin

Night and Day, by the great South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo, debuted in the competition at Berlin last year and I thought it an instant classic. It played the New York Film festival last fall, and I was afraid it would disappear.

Hong’s already made another terrific film, Like You Know It All. Fortunately, Night and Day has not gone anywhere. It opens today at the Anthology in New York and is becoming available here through the various distribution platforms of IFC Films.

Hong studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and also spent a year living in Paris in 1991. His rueful and melancholy restoration comedies like Turning Gate, Woman is the Future of Man and Woman on the Beach are among the most beautiful works of the last decade.

His theme is a great one: the emotional and sexual geography staked out between men and women.

His sophisticated comedies of manners cut like a knife, and stick in the mind. Almost all of the director’s protagonists are filmmakers, writers or artists. Night and Day is about the romantic travails of a celebrated painter named Seong-nam (Kim Yeong-ho) who flees to Paris to avoid being arrested on a possession charge. A chance encounter with a former lover initiates an elaborate and dense roundelay among a group of stunningly beautiful and defiantly individualistic women.

The most elusive and captivating is a young art student (Park Eun-hye). She’s put off by the fact he’s married and considerably older. Her mixture of insouciance and vulnerability makes each of their encounters tense and highly suggestive. Their banter, often predicated on formal uses of language, has a wounding precision. Hong evokes attitudes and complex feelings about identity, isolation and assimilation found in the story’s darker vein of death and loss. Like Tale of Cinema, he annotates feeling and desire through a judicious, rigorous use of the zoom.

“I am so unlucky,” a major character says at the film’s crucial scene. The moment crystallizes the power and tenacity of this director’s work, where the seemingly throwaway — the digressive — reveal the sharpest truths. The film’s erotic tangles, built on ideas of duration and disruption, turned off some viewers, though I was mesmerized.

Very few directors, men or women, could transform the sight of a young women’s bare feet jutting from underneath a blanket into such an ecstatically beautiful moment.

I was fortunate to spend some time with Hong in Berlin last year. Here’s the man himself on his art, love and magic.

Light sensitive: I guess on some level it’s entirely appropriate you making a film in Paris, because you’ve been called the director most influenced by New Wave directors, particularly Francois Truffaut and Eric Rohmer.

Hong Sang-soo: The reason I like their work and also Ozu is that they’re exceptional films. I like those French filmmakers, but it’s also somewhat coincidental, people see the similarities and the connections people make between our films, because I already have this inside me.

LS: The title Woman on the Beach, was that a homage to the Jean Renoir film?

Hong: I only found out about that later when somebody mentioned it to me. In Korea there’s an old popular song with the same expression. Originally I had a different title, and I was drinking with the producer one night and I just said, how about this title. Also I like English translations.

LS: Did you ever spend any significant time in Paris?

Hong: Just one year, in 1991, before I settled down in Korea. I wanted to see how people lived there. I was aware of a number of [foreign] artists living in France or coming to France and I just wanted to see what it was like living there. In the beginning I lived in this artist’s house. She had an empty room and then my wife came and she found an apartment. My work worked taking care of children and teaching English. The money she made was just for being a baguette.

LS: What was the inspiration of the story?

Hong: At the very beginning it was a small incident. I was in New York and the hotel did not allow me to smoke inside. So I was outside, and there was a train, I saw the conductor and suddenly I felt so lonely so I called my wife and she was doing something in the supermarket and it was daytime there. I could hear a bit of noise in the supermarket, and I thought it was strange. She felt next to me. I could feel her by talking to her and we are separated by this time continuity. Time is so absolute. It felt strange at the moment. When I started thinking about this film, this incident came up.

LS: Your protagonists are almost invariably artists, filmmakers, writers, and now a painter.

Hong: People ask why are your characters so similar? What I do with them in each picture is different for me. Being an artist or a filmmaker in a society like Korea allows me to do something with the picture; I want to work in a form that is familiar. I don’t want to work in material that I haven’t [got a personal connection to.] Whether it’s the location, the nature of the work, I want to work with things that I have some connection with. When I go wrong, I know I’ll go wrong.

LS: All of your films negotiate this geography of desire. Why is that such an enduring theme?

Hong: Because men are always doing something deep down because of women. Not only men, but women too, they have this strong desire to be loved by somebody they love. Whatever honorable thing he does, he does because he wants to be loved by the woman he loves. Dealing with these kinds of relationships can reveal many things, more than other kinds of subjects because it involves lots of mysticisms, prejudices, lies and all the things that are in these relationships. The strong desire prohibits people from looking at their lives coldly and objectively. All the things are intermingled.

LS: I loved that the movie is almost two and a half hours long. It allowed me to luxuriate in the movie, and get into the rhythm and activities of the characters. Other people I’ve talked complained about the length.

Hong: When I finished shooting, I realized that it’s quite long. When we finished shooting, I knew it was long, but I thought, no problem, I usually cut out about thirty or forty minutes. I thought I was going to do it again. Then one month passed without doing anything. Just going to the editing room and smoking and coming back. I realized I didn’t want to cut, even though some parts are maybe less interesting and some parts there’s the feeling that nothing is happening but I need that part for the film to feel like a diary. I thought I could re-arrange a little bit or even shorten it a bit, but then I gave up again because the plotlines came out very spontaneously. I wrote them very quickly in about seven or ten days, so I decided to leave in there the stuff that was coming out.

LS: The sexual content in your films is sometimes quite open, even explicit. Is that still considered a taboo in your country, especially frontal female nudity?

Hong: Not really anymore. I don’t do nude scenes anymore because I just get bored with it. When I was doing Woman is the Future of Man, I felt very strongly, I don’t want to do this again. So I stopped after that. When I asked actresses to do nude scenes, I felt [uncomfortable] and I said I’m not going to do it anymore.

LS: Your style of working appears much closer to that of a novelist or diarist than a filmmaker?

Hong: Whatever I do the important thing as a filmmaker is what I choose to do each time. I don’t plan out what I’m going to do. The only time in my career as a filmmaker I did was on one of my first films, I wrote down what I wanted to do. After that I didn’t think about that. It just all comes out, whatever I observe, whatever is necessary. I don’t know where all the details come from when I first make my mind, and the detail and structure are all coming from different sources. Usually the structure is coming from some memory.

LS: Do you think of yourself as a visual writer?

Hong: I have a set up, a structure of form or a main incident, and then one by one this piece just comes. They are coming from all over, my memory, things from my past, whatever I feel at that moment, I feel like a magnet, just get a piece, something completely different. I combine them. I don’t visualize them.

LS: How’d you characterize your working methods with your cinematographer?

Hong: I usually ask the cinematographer when I hire him that it’s okay for me to decide on the angle. If he says okay, then all right I can work with him. Somebody else deciding the angle doesn’t make sense. It’s so important. Angle and movement I decide and the rest of it we discuss.

LS: South Korea is a small country, but it has one of the most active and interesting national cinemas, both a popular, genre cinema and a realist tradition that you’re a part of. Is it possible to explain it?

Hong: I don’t usually do this kind of generalization. Koreans were known in the East Asian territories for a long time for being playful; they dance, they drink all night. In all the Chinese history books Koreans were described that way. We have some this temperance. We were very well educated considering our economy. Parents were crazy about letting their sons and daughters go to the university. Everybody was well read and things like that. That’s the foundation. We were oppressed [by the Japanese] for a long time and then we had this dictatorship. The economic development allowed us to make so many films.

LS: What drew you into filmmaking?

Hong: At the beginning it was an accident. Somebody told me why don’t you try directing theater plays as a major. I was nineteen. I thought I could do that, so I prepared for the entrance exam in the theater department. The department also had a filmmaking major. In the theater you gathered around groups all the time and you worked together. I didn’t like that. The filmmakers were moving around on their own, they were free, just roaming around, so that’s why I changed the majors.

It came to me as I changed the major. Filmmaking was something I could work all my life doing something, and always find something curious or interesting, or what I’d call experiments. Before that, I never thought of becoming a filmmaker or anything like that. I realized by becoming a filmmaker I do my experiments and try out different things and find a way to always keep satisfying myself.

Toronto Film Festival 2009 - Día 4

Antes de caerme de sueño --esto de llegar tarde y ponerme a escribir después de ponerme al día con todo el tema Del Potro es malo para la salud--, un rápido comentario de las cuatro películas de hoy.

VINCERE, de Marco Bellocchio (7) Políticamente intensa (¿o es al revés?), la película de Bellocchio trata sobre "la otra" mujer de Mussolini, y la locura y perdición que la situación, el propio Duce y su propio y particular "fascismo romántico" le fueron causando. Esa otra historia de Mussolini tiene sus ecos, claro, en la del primer ministro actual, Berlusconi. ¡Imaginen la cantidad de esposas y amantes secretas que contarán más historias secretas de este hombre dentro de algunos años! ¿La gustará a Silvio el futurismo?

LA PRIMA LINEA, de Renato De María (3) Otra que tengo que cubrir para el jurado... Pese a tener como productores a los Dardenne, casi nada de ellos se nota en esta película obvia, didáctica y previsible sobre un episodio de las luchas políticas de Italia en los años '70. La violencia política de la época, explicada para niños.

LEBANON, de Samuel Maoz (5) No puedo, lo admito. El género "los soldados israelíes también somos seres humanos, tenemos padres y madres, y no nos gusta nada eso de andar matando gente, pero por suerte somos cultos y sofisticados y 25 años después nos da culpa haber hecho ciertas cosas y queremos que se enteren que la estamos pasando mal..." me tiene harto. Y si bien la película tiene momentos de una gran tensión y ciertas proezas técnicas (transcurre toda dentro de un tanque, en el Líbano, en 1982, y además de los planos cortísimos, mucho se cuenta a través de lo que el "tirador" ve desde su mirilla, o como se llame), los conflictos personales/dramáticos de los soldados son bastante básicos y de manualcito de psicodrama. No sé, tal vez sea una gran película, pero para soldados judíos prefiero por lejos a los "Bastardos" de Tarantino.

LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL, de Hong Sang-soo (9) Sí, es como que lo supieras todo, Hong. O si no lo sabés todo --o al menos no lo sabe el personaje/alter ego de tu película--, como director tenés clarísimo el camino. Este es un capítulo más de esa "larga película de la vida" que es la filmografía de uno de los más grandes realizadores de estos tiempos. Quédense con sus Hanekes, sus Von Triers, sus Gaspar Noés: a mí déjenme vivir con los borrachines de Hong todo el tiempo que haga falta...

Como si lo supiera todo. Notas sobre la distancia cómplice: Hong Sang Soo

En el mes de Septiembre espacio.ciclos dedica cinco jornadas al realizador coreano Hong Sang Soo con sus películas “La virgen desnudada por sus pretendientes”, “Turning gate”, “La mujer es el futuro del hombre”, “Cuento de cine” y “Woman on the beach”.

Con 19 años, trató de pasar el examen de acceso a la universidad, pero no quería estudiar. Visitando a uno de mis amigos que tocaba el piano, pensó que podría componer, pero rápidamente abandonó sus lecciones. Un amigo le presentó enseguida a un director de teatro. Cuando le dijo que no hacía nada, lo incitó para trabajar en teatro. Nunca lo había pensado y le gustó la idea. Preparó durante tres meses el concurso de acceso al departamento de teatro y cine de la universidad. Ciertos profesores eran muy autoritarios, pensaban que era necesario imponer la au! toridad para trabajar en armonía.

En el departamento de cine, la jerarquía era menos pronunciada, y los estudiantes se ocupaban de su cámara. Decidió así cambiar de disciplina. Viajó a Estados Unidos, dejando Corea y la escuela. Hasta los 27 años no se enfrentó a la puesta en escena. Utilizando el cine como una protección, se puso a beber.

En 2006, Hong Sang Soo, tardíamente descubierto en Francia da una entrevista para la célebre revista “Cahiers du cinèma” donde con simpleza y justeza nos acerca su conciencia sobre las posibilidades de la narración cinematográfica en el siglo XIX: “En Estados Unidos nada me parecía importante porque se encontraba fuera de Corea. Hacía películas experimentales, pensando ingenuamente que, en las películas narrativas, no podíamos hacer otra cosa que algo ya codificado. Es cuando vi por primera vez “Journal d´un curé de campagne” de Robert Bresson cuando decidí hacer películas narrativas”.

PROGRAMACION
Miércoles 2 de Septiembre - 20 hs. | Jueves 3 de Septiembre - 15hs. La virgen desnudada por sus pretendientes (O! Su-jŏng – Corea del Sur– 126 min – blanco y negro- 2000)

Miércoles 9 de Septiembre - 20 hs. | Jueves 10 de Septiembre - 15hs. Turning Gate (Saenghwalui balgyeon – Corea del Sur – 115 min – 2002)

Miércoles 16 de Septiembre - 20 hs. | Jueves 17 de Septiembre - 15hs. La mujer es el futuro del hombre (Yeojaneun namjaui miraeda - Corea del Sur - Color – 87 min. – 2004)

Miércoles 23 de Septiembre - 20 hs. | Jueves 24 de Septiembre - 15hs. Cuento de cine (Geuk jang jeon – Corea del Sur – Color - 89 min. – 2005)

Miércoles 30 de Septiembre - 20 hs. | Jueves 31 de Septiembre - 15hs. Woman on the beach (Haebyeonui yeoin– Corea del Sur – Color - 127 min. – 2006)

ENTRADA LIBRE Y GRATUITA
Miércoles 16hs. y 20hs.

SALA DE PROYECCIONES
DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DEL CINE
Pasaje Giuffra 330 – San Telmo

"Like You Know It All", de Hong Sang-soo (Variety, The Auteurs)

By Justin Chang

A Jeonwonsa Film Co. production. (International sales: Finecut Co., Seoul.) Produced, directed, written by Hong Sang-soo.

With: Kim Tae-woo, Ko Hyun-jung, Uhm Ji-won.

The soju keeps on flowing -- and so does the talk -- in "Like You Know It All," another playful exercise in liquor-lubricated truthtelling from Hong Sang-soo, and arguably his most broadly amusing work yet. After his overextended Parisian detour last year with "Night and Day," the South Korean auteur is back on familiar geographical and comedic terrain with this two-part tale of a film director drawn into various awkward social and romantic configurations. Pic reps a tart treat for Hong's fans at festivals and in limited arthouse runs but is unlikely to score him a wider following.

As might be surmised from its impudent jab of a title, "Like You Know It All" neither achieves nor aims for the melancholy perfection of Hong's exquisite "Woman on the Beach" (2006); structurally, it feels like that film's slightly inebriated cousin -- looser, less elegant, possessed of a more overtly farcical sensibility. But like "Beach," it shows the writer-helmer's ongoing interest in making movies about artists, his eagerness to strip away their delusions and pretensions by subjecting them to rigorous comic scrutiny, primarily through their alternately flirtatious and tetchy exchanges with the opposite sex.

Korean male directors and the women they attempt to seduce have become Hong's targets of choice, adding a dimension of self-critique that has rarely been as consistently funny as it is here. The director in this case is Ku (Kim Tae-woo), a filmmaker of some repute but little commercial success, who arrives in the South Korean town of Jecheon during the summer to serve on the jury of the local film festival.

Hong is a well-traveled veteran of the fest circuit and he has a lot of fun at its expense here, eliciting easy laughs with shots of Ku snoring through screenings. But the effect is less to mock the festival scene than to expose Ku as a craven hypocrite, prone to flattering others excessively and making promises he has little intention of keeping.

The usual Hongian hijinks ensue as Ku hangs out with his colleagues; naturally, there will be enough booze, scorn and unplanned emotional disclosures to go around the table. The film's first half culminates in Ku's reunion with an old friend, who invites him back to his house to dine with him and his young wife. What transpires next remains entirely offscreen; suffice it to say that the night ends badly and the morning after is even worse.

The second half picks up 12 days later, as Ku heads to Jeju Island to speak to a film class, to yet more humiliating effect. After another round of drinks and philosophical bull sessions, Ku runs into an even older friend, a painter, with a beautiful wife many years his junior, Gosun (Ko Hyun-jung).

Rather than forming a single, integrated narrative, the film's two halves function as panels in a diptych, with countless points of narrative and thematic connection. In both instances, Ku receives a handwritten letter and initiates an exchange with a married woman that yields disastrous consequences. It's unclear how a movie with so many strategic symmetries doesn't wind up feeling pat and over-diagrammed, but in terms of both dialogue and pacing, there's a wonderful messiness to the film's leisurely, unpredictable rhythms.

Playing a woman with a hard-earned awareness of what she wants from a relationship, Ko is well matched with Kim. Latter essays one of Hong's less toxic male specimens but manages to be frequently exasperating nonetheless (though his pensive voiceover balances the equation a bit). Both actors also appeared in "Woman on the Beach," and their very different dynamic here raises the mind-tickling suggestion, for Hong acolytes, that the two films constitute a larger diptych themselves.

Visuals are of the helmer's usual unadorned style, mostly medium shots situated to include two or three actors in the frame, abetted by occasional pans and zooms. Jeong Yong-jin's score indulges from time to time in mildly Philip Glass-like repetitions.

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Camera (color), Kim Hoon-kwang; editor, Hahm Sung-won; music, Jeong Yong-jin; sound, Kim Mir. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Directors' Fortnight), May 16, 2009. Running time: 126 MIN.

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By Daniel Kasman

Hong Sang-soo’s new film is not what I expected at all. His last three (Tale of Cinema, Woman on the Beach, and Night and Day) all seemed subtle but substantial evolutions of a filmmaker unjustly accused of making the same movie again and again. Each had a discreet look, setting, and cast, but Hong’s new film, Like You Know It All, is puzzling, a remarkably amorphous film that harkens back to the feel of Hong’s first two movies while continuing to blend his structuralist rhymes and repetitions of the story deeper, more mysteriously and tenuously into the texture of the movie.

Like You Know It All is bifurcated—of course—between a film director (Go Hyun-jung) visiting a festival as a guest judge and falling into drunken mishaps with the locals and a trip soon after the filmmaker takes to do a Q&A with a class of students where he experiences a more mature, streamlined version of the previous trip’s drama. So far, so Hong. Yet Go plays his character as the most polite and distanced of all of Hong’s frustrated intellectuals, so much so that it’s not until the final reel that he actually voices any frustration at all. He also keeps it in his pants, which is to say that the reckless abandon Hong’s heroes tend to awkwardly climax with after days and nights of wary estimation of everything around them is, here, minor. The encounters that serve that Rohmerian function of facing our hero with things in the world and people’s views of life so that he may set himself with or against them to define himself are haphazard and far less A-to-B as in the past. Instead, there is an onward, subtle, even barely detected and mysteriously provoked maturation of Go's film director throughout the film. This slyness in development is as continually rewarding as its sneakiness is unexpected.

Despite the self-reflexive story, the film never fully forms a specific identity as past Hong films have, like the many shots that start or end by panning or zooming to a blasé composition of nature. It exists, just so. Like You Know It All is provocative in this respect especially for Hong fans (and I would be curious to read a reaction to the film of someone unfamiliar with his work). Things seems to be to an even great degree than Night and Day’s episodic pathways through Paris and male desire in a state of constant, unstable flux. The wide, quite varied, and often very funny and erratically acted cast only makes the path more bumpy, more curious. What is going on in this film? Hong’s past work, up until Night and Day, tended to fold neatly in on itself. Not so here. Slant rhyming replaces the more diagrammatic plots of the past, and the Buñuelian surrealism of dreams, objects, and dangerous ellipses all fit so naturally into this film one might barely note the weirdness of it all. Like You Know It All is as quicksilver as a modest, slow, deadpan and very wayward drama can be. Every Hong film seems to point to the next, but this unexpected move towards something different, a new, more opaque sense of storytelling—and perhaps even an attempt at the mainstream—leaves one not knowing what to expect next.

"Like You Know It All", de Hong Sang-soo (Promedio: 7,83)

Quincena de Realizadores

Diego Batlle (La Nación, Otroscines, Argentina) - 8
Cristina Nord (Taz, Germany) - 8
Manu Yáñez (Fotogramas, España) - 8
Luciano Monteagudo (Página/12, Argentina) - 8
Alvaro Arroba (Crítica, Argentina) - 8
Violeta Kovacsics (Lumiere, España) - 7

Promedio general: 7,83

"Like You Know It All", de Hong Sang-soo (Screen)

By Lee Marshall

Dir/scr/prod. Hong Sang-soo. South Korea. 2009. 140mins.

An elliptical, meandering but often quietly hilarious tale set around the downtime of a Korean arthouse film director, Like You Know It All sees Hong Sang-soo attempting nothing particularly new in his ninth feature, but rarely has it all come together so smoothly and breezily.

Hong seems to be mellowing, moving away from the prickly impenetrability of early works like The Power of Kangwon Province towards a gentler, more observational humour – though he has not abandoned his tendency to make films about filmmakers, or his fascination with two-part structure.

Hong’s films are well considered in Korea but make little impact on the box office; his last, Night and Day, failed to break the $100,000 barrier. With its healthy humour quotient, Like You Know It All should top that figure, but the producer/director needs to look at territories such as France – where he is a cult favourite – to fully recoup his modest budget. CTV International picked up Francophone rights from Finecut on the eve of Cannes, and given the right release the film should enjoy a modest but sustained arthouse run in Gallic urban centres. Elsewhere, theatrical prospects are uncertain.

One of the commercial limitations on Hong’s films is that so much of his visual style is rather dreary point-and-shoot work in available light. In a way, however, this serves to de-gloss the characters and focus attention on their deadpan interactions. These begin in Like You Know It All when arthouse director Ku (Kim Tae-woo) turns up at a (real) film festival in the northern town of Jecheon, where he is on a jury organised by a skitty, Tourette-ish festival director (Uhm Ji-won). After some heavy drinking, an old friend and business partner invites Ku back to his house, and the next morning, the director appears to have a liaison of sorts with the young wife of his friend, who attacks Ku in a jealous rage.

Twelve days later, Ku turns up on Jeju island, where he has been invited to address a class of film students taught by an old college friend. Distorted parallels between the two parts abound; Ku is approached by an attractive younger woman – a kudos-seeking porn starlet in part one, a flirtatious young film student in part two – who eventually ends up in bed with an artistic rival of the director’s – a scuzzy fellow director in part one, a respected older painter in part two. And when the painter invites Ku back to his house to meet his young wife (Go Hyun-jung), we sort of know what to expect – though as always with Hong, that’s not exactly what we’re given.

Like You Know It All may be breaking no new ground, but it’s wryly perceptive in its deconstruction of artistic egos, sending up pretensions while at the same time making what sound like first-person declarations about creativity. It’s also – and this is no small part of of its appeal - Hong’s funniest film in years.

Hong Sang-soo filma otra vez

En Seúl, Hong Sang-soo comenzó a rodar su novena película, tentativamente titulada "Jal al-ji-do mot-ha-myun-seo" (Even Without Knowing Much), aunque ese no será su título definitivo en inglés.

La película la está rodando en digital, con un presupuesto de sólo 100 mil dólares, y con un elenco de actores que ya han trabajado varias veces con él, como Kim Tae-Woo y Go Hyun-jung ("Woman on the Beach") y Um Ji-won ("Tale of Cinema").

La historia, según "Variety", se centra en un miembro de un jurado de un festival de arte y sus encuentros con mujeres. Se filmará entre agosto y septiembre con el Jecheon Music and Film Festival como marco.