HILL OF FREEDOM
A film by Hong Sang-soo
2014, 67 minutes
2014, 67 minutes
No. 263
Narrative
Narrative
Description
Kwon (Seo Young-hwa) returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori (Ryo Kase, Like Someone In Love), who has come back from Japan to propose to her. As she walks down a flight of stairs, Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology… and so must we. Shot in the narrow alleys, petite cafes and beautiful hanok inns of Seoul’s historic Jong-ro district, a favorite Hong location, Hill of Freedom is a masterful, alternately funny and haunting, tale of love and longing from the great director.
Reviews
"The prolific South Korean writer-director’s funniest work, a wry, mostly English-language comedy." - Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, The AV Club
“Soulful, subtly acerbic, tongue-in-cheek.” - John Anderson, Indiewire
"One of Hong’s best films to date." - Michael Sicinski, Cinema Scope
“A masterwork. Achieves a complexity akin to the grand historical meditations of Alain Resnais. Ingeniously constructed. I’ve watched it three times forwards and one time backwards and I feel as if I’m just beginning to get the hang of it.” - Richard Brody, The New Yorker
