Oki's Movie

Dir: Hong Sang-soo

2010

**

I didn’t much care for Éric Rohmer’s films until years after they were released and I wonder whether I will feel the same way about Hong Sang-soo’s films a few years from now. Never say never, but I do doubt it. I do find his films somewhat self-indulgent and I struggle to find anything that holds my interest. I liked his follow up film The Day He Arrives but more for the aesthetics than the story. I find his films quite claustrophobic and Oki’s Movie is rather dull visually. The structure of the film is divided into four clumsy chapters. The film begins with ‘A Day for Incantation’ On his way to a screening of one of his films, struggling short film director Nam Jin-gu (Lee Sun-kyun) is nagged by his wife Jang Su-yang (Seo Yeong-hwa) about his drinking, and he wonders if she is having an affair with a guy called Yeong-su. Nam's onetime professor at film school, Song (Moon Sung-keun), tells him that film-making as an art is now dead. At a dinner with film-school staff, Nam gets drunk and has an argument with Song, about whom he's heard a disquieting rumor. Afterwards, at the Q&A for his film, Nam is asked by a member of the audience (Lee Chae-eun) whether it's true he was dating the actress at the time and is therefore responsible for ruining her life. Nam says he has quit directing. The second chapter, King of Kisses, is set some years earlier but this isn’t initially obvious. Nam sees fellow student Jung Ok-heui (the Oki of the title, played by Jung Yu-mi) at film school and tries to go out with her, claiming he's never dated a woman before. When they smooch in a greenhouse, she says he's a good kisser. She's still getting over a relationship with an older man but finally gives in to Nam's persistence, and they sleep together and begin dating. After the Snowstorm is set following a heavy bout of snow, only Nam and Jung turn up one day for Prof. Song's class, and the three end up talking about relationships. Song at this point has already decided to quit teaching. The final chapter is Oki's Movie, the title of the film. Jung narrates her own short movie based on her relationships with two guys, an "older man" and a "younger man", with whom she separately went walking with one winter on Mt. Acha, south of Seoul. It basically highlights the differences between the older and young man, the overall film suggesting how you get from one to the other. The switching between perspectives and timelines doesn’t work especially well and the acting is either very natural or painfully amateur. Supposedly Hong’s movies are received by Korean audiences with gales of laughter, so I think maybe something is lost in translation. I didn’t misunderstand the story but I do feel that much of the tone and dialogue was probably lost on me. The repeated playing of Land of Hope and Glory was a joke that went on too long and was never that funny in the first place. I don’t think the characters came across in the way they were supposed to, or rather, they didn’t have the effect I think they should have. I understand Hong’s films are subtle in places, but I think many of the lines and performances were subtle to the point of dull. I think Oki was probably the more interesting character, Hong clearly thinks so too, but Jung Yu-mi was given very little to work with. Oki admits in the film that she isn’t a god person, which is ignored. She also bursts out with "What can you do for me?" during a meal with Jingu, and then covers up when she realises she has said it aloud. Subtle, but too subtle, as she just can’t compete with Professor Song and Jingu, who are both alter-egos of Hong. I can’t fault a director for putting themselves in their own films but I think Hong crosses the mark to the point that the only people who are ever going to be interested are mega-fans and family members and the likelihood of me becoming either is pretty unlikely. It isn’t a bad film at all, I just found nothing in it for me. It also features the worst drunken performance I've ever seen. Surely if you can't act drunk, get drunk? It is what they did in all the films that Hong is clearly a fan of.