Hahaha: Taking a Page Out of Woody Allen's Book

I don't know why the similarities between Woody Allen and Hong Sang-soo never occurred to me before. They're both directors who crank out a movie a year, and primarily focus on troubled romances -- sometimes seriously, other times comically, oft times of the summer/winter variety, occasionally triangles. They're both critical darlings who have won more than a handful of awards -- both nationally and internationally -- yet neither could be called a box-office goldmine. They also have a small group of actors they reuse in multiple movies then were drawn to casting bigger names later in their careers. For Hong, that last bit has led to Isabelle Hupert in In Another Country and pop star Rain in Soar Into the Sun. Since Hong is a master of naturalistic acting, neither celeb upstages his or her co-stars.

One way that Hong differs from Allen, however, is in his constant use of drunk scenes. In Hahaha, not only is the framework a drunk scene -- two friends recount their overlapping weekend in a small coastal town called Tongyeong -- but so are about a quarter of the events they recount: failed filmmaker Moon-kyeong (Kim Sang-kyung) taking Seong-ok (Moon So-ri) back to a hotel room, depressed critic Joong-sik (Yu Jun-sang) taking his mistress (Ye Ji-won) to meet his uncle, Moon-kyeong's mother (Yoon Yeo-jeong) drinking with all of the above at some point or another. Because it's a Hong Sang-soo film, the drunk scenes are universally good. No one facilitates as many riveting naturalistic performances as Hong.

Both Allen and Hong are experimenters with form, too. Here in Hahaha that manifests itself with the framing conversation that takes place in the present being merely a voiceover to a black-and-white slideshow of Moon-kyeong and Joong-sik toasting, talking and saying "Cheers!" But unlike Allen, Hong isn't one of the leads nor does he cast himself in a cameo. He's got a history of having stand-ins for the alcoholic, womanizing, deluded artist we assume him to be and here he does it in triplicate, the third version being a fickle poet (Kim Kang-woo) who's not only the best friend of pill-popping critic Joong-sik but also a surrogate son to man-child Moon-kyeong's mom who gives the poet a free apartment once Moon-kyeong turns it down.

This is the 10th Hong Sang-soo movie I've seen! (I'm ready for more!)

Fists of Legend: Their Friendship Has a Fighting Chance

Fists of Legend has a great central premise -- a reality show in which middle-aged men fight each other and professional mixed martial artists in an attempt to reclaim the "legendary" status they once had as teens. Some win; most get their asses whupped. It's a concept so good that you'd think the movie was based on an already-existing, internationally franchised TV series. Au contraire, the screenplay is based on a popular Korean webtoon. Such humble beginnings! Perhaps a reality TV series lies ahead? Let the network bidding wars begin... In the meantime, actors Hwang Jeong-min, Yu Jun-sang and Yun Jae-moon bring a certain reality to the pseudo-sports event -- and the back stories that lead to the squared circle -- with naturalistic performances weighted by the disappointment that comes from being halfway through a life that you're only experiencing halfway.

Hwang's character is the owner of an unsuccessful noodle shop; Yu plays an overlooked publicist for a construction company; Yun, a tattooed ex-con. Way back in the day, they were The Three Musketeers -- one an Olympian contender; another the toughest kid at school; the final, the toughest kid at that school's rival. The only one in their crowd to have succeeded -- the fourth musketeer played by Jung Woong-in -- has evolved from spoiled rich kid to unscrupulous business magnate whose abuse of wealth and power has only gotten worse over time.

Bullied by a television producer (Lee Yu-won) who should be someone's love interest but isn't, the three non-rich, now-estranged friends are recruited for a mega-match of middle-aged mixed martial artistry that promises $200,000 for the winner (and ratings galore for the struggling producer). Through a series of flashbacks -- ironically, better acted than the present-day scenes -- you learn why the friendships fell apart and see what dreams were crushed along the way. The takeaway? Big-eared Hwang and his pouty young counterpart Park Jung-min were the coolest then and now. But does the most likable character win? This is a Korean movie after all. You'll have to watch it to see.

In Another Country: Falling in Love With the Lifeguard All Over Again

Isabelle Huppert in a Korean movie? That's right. It's Hong Sang-soo's In Another Country, a melancholic diversion of three interconnected shorts featuring the transplanted French actress as a bewitching director, a philandering businesswoman and a jilted wife -- each with the same foreign accent. Before you get hung up on Huppert's undifferentiated vocal work, consider this: Hong hasn't cast Huppert to display a Meryl Streep-like range. He's cast her because he recognizes her as a kindred spirit. He knows she's capable of excelling at the in-the-moment acting that exemplifies his films at their best. Indeed, Huppert's proficiency at playing the moments between the moments is most apparent in the opening vignette during which she's largely listening to conversations in Korean she cannot understand in full but nevertheless intuits in good part. If the latter scenes don't allow her to silently upstage her cast mates two more times, they at least show she's in good company with co-stars like Yoon Yeo-jeong, Moon So-ri, and Jeong Yu-mi who match her meaningful glance for meaningful glance as a best friend, a jealous wife and a hotel worker respectively.

The men don't fare as well though. Kwon Hye-hyo may be fine as a hard-drinking man on the make but neither Kim Yong-ok nor Moon Sung-keun are even passably believable as a none-too-clever monk and a mildly amorous director. The nuances of Hong's deceptively simple dialogue escapes them both completely. The only male actor who actually holds his own with the actresses is, ironically enough, beefcake Yoo Joon-sang. Emerging from the waves like a God of Love for each of Huppert's ladies abroad, Yoo's performance as a dimwitted lifeguard isn't mining subtext so much as it's conveying good-natured incomprehension. Flirting in a language he hasn't mastered, he's a consistently humorous counterpart to Huppert's ennui in triplicate. Who wouldn't fall in love with him? And who wouldn't ditch him without remorse soon thereafter?

The Day He Arrives: Drink, Eat and Be Melancholic

Dear Hong Sang-soo,

I'd like to offer you a public apology. After years of bad-mouthing your films and trashing them through reviews on my website and elsewhere, I've come to see the error of my ways. You are indeed a great filmmaker and if I don't like all your movies, the ones I do like, I do so with unrestrained enthusiasm. Count The Day He Arrives in this latter category. Much like the heart-wrenching Woman Is the Future of Man and the despairing The Power of Kangwon Province, your 2011 pic The Day He Arrives is an exquisite picaresque in which a seemingly directionless narrative somehow leads us to a greater appreciation of the inherent tragedy of life.

That you're able to convey such depths of emotions from chance encounters, that you consistently pull such naked performances from your actors, that you can revisit your ironic stand-in, the cad-director (an ingratiating Yu Jun-sang), and make him feel fresh... All these things delight me even as they catch me off-guard since the first few movies of yours I saw repeatedly drove me to fits of rage.

Was Song Seon-mi as good in Woman on the Beach as she is here playing a fawning cineaste? Was Kim Ee-seong as natural in The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well as he is here playing an embittered actor? In short, the pleasure I'm getting from your films now makes me doubt my assessments before. Should I retract the savage comments I made on your other flicks? Maybe Night and Day isn't a piece of crap. Maybe your short "Lost in the Mountains" isn't half-baked.

I'll have to go back to those and re-watch them some time. For now, I'll just recommend The Day He Arrives, your flawless, black-and-white meditation on coincidence, love, bromance, loneliness, and the art of creation itself. Well done Director Hong and please, forgive me.

Sincerely,

Drew P.

Wide Awake: You Are Not Getting Very, Very Sleepy

In the 1990s, French performance artist Orlan caused a sensation by having plastic surgery done while she was awake reading the philosophy of Lacan. Unquestionably, writer-director Lee Kyoo-man and his cowriter Lee Hyeon-jin see the interface of consciousness and surgery as something less erudite and more traumatizing. The young child who anesthesia paralyzes without numbing during open-heart surgery grows up to be a homicidal psychopath who enjoys getting intentionally stung by bees and murdering the hospital staff as well as their offspring. But which man is the addled adult version of the crazed child? Is it the dashing doctor (Kim Myeong-min) or the pert anesthesiologist (Jeong Yu-seok)? Is it the nebbishy hypnotist (Kim Tae-woo) or the mysterious drifter with a steamy shower scene (built-for-pleasure Yu Jun-sang)? Despite what you might first think, it's certainly not that pesky crank-caller. Wide Awake is one of those movies that doesn't keep you guessing so much as it keeps slyly misleading you. Shout "He did it!" once and you'll shout it a dozen times -- albeit less victoriously. What you'll be screaming during what looks like footage from actual surgeries is more like, "Whoa! That looks too real!"

Nightmare: Laughing at Death

You have to slog through a morass of mystification before Nightmare takes off. But the last 20 minutes are the kind of crazy, nonsensical, campy shenanigans that have kept me a horror fan in between the actually scary movies. Furthermore, you can probably fast forward to this part and not lose anything in the process. The fun starts when an incrimating videotape reveals the crime that's been the cause of all the murders which have preceded. While there's definitely a relief to learn the why behind it all, what's more entertaining is to see a killer pussycat attack the man who ends up being the villain. That guy (Yu Jun-sang) goes on to give what could be a career-defining performance: He laughs insanely, he grins demonically, he stares moronically, he strangles with videotape. Where's the acting school that teaches this extreme form of expressiveness? As he batters the two surviving ingenues—a mental institute patient (Choi Jeong-yun) and her insensitive friend (Kim Gyu-ri) who's continually cursed to be at the wrong place at the wrong time—Yu breathes new life into the expression "so bad it's good." Director-writer Ahn Byeong-ki improved with later efforts Phone and Bunshinsaba. Here is his humble beginning.