RIGHT NOW WRONG THEN
A film by Hong Sangsoo
2015, 121 minutes
2015, 121 minutes
No. 015
NARRATIVE
NARRATIVE
Description
A master filmmaker, Hong Sangsoo (The Day He Arrives, ) makes deliciously intricate comedy of manners that expose the fissures of male-female relationships and of cinema itself.
Quite by mistake, art-film director Chunsu arrives in Suwon a day early. With time to kill before his lecture the next day, Chunsu stops by a restored, old palace and meets a fledgling artist, Yoon Heejung. She’s never seen any of his films, but knows he’s famous. They talk. And together, they go to Heejung’s workshop to look at her paintings, have Sushi and Soju.
Every word, every pause, every facial expression, and every movement is a negotiation between revelation and concealment: too far over the line for Chunsu and he’s suddenly a middle-aged man on the prowl who uses insights as tools of seduction; too far for Heejung and she’s suddenly acquiescing to a man who’s leaving the next day.
So they walk the fine line all the way to a brilliant and achingly funny end point, at which time… we begin again, but now some things appear different.
Quite by mistake, art-film director Chunsu arrives in Suwon a day early. With time to kill before his lecture the next day, Chunsu stops by a restored, old palace and meets a fledgling artist, Yoon Heejung. She’s never seen any of his films, but knows he’s famous. They talk. And together, they go to Heejung’s workshop to look at her paintings, have Sushi and Soju.
Every word, every pause, every facial expression, and every movement is a negotiation between revelation and concealment: too far over the line for Chunsu and he’s suddenly a middle-aged man on the prowl who uses insights as tools of seduction; too far for Heejung and she’s suddenly acquiescing to a man who’s leaving the next day.
So they walk the fine line all the way to a brilliant and achingly funny end point, at which time… we begin again, but now some things appear different.
Festivals
Winner, Grand Jury Prize, Locarno Film Festival
Official Selection, Toronto Film Festival
Official Selection, New York Film Festival
Official Selection, Toronto Film Festival
Official Selection, New York Film Festival
Reviews
"For me, there’s something especially unique about the films of Hong Sangsoo. It’s got to do with his masterful sense of storytelling. In each of his films that I’ve managed to see, everything kind of starts unassumingly [but then things] unpeel like an orange." – Martin Scorsese
