While her husband is on a business trip, Gamhee meets three women on the outskirts of Seoul. She first visits two close friends at their homes; the third, an older acquaintance, she encounters by chance at an independent cinema.
“From his feature debut Daijiga umule pajinnal [The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well] (1996) to Domangchin yeoja [The Woman Who Ran] (2020), his latest film that premiered at the Berlinale, winning him the Silver Bear for Best Director, Hong Sang-soo has continuously reinvented his explorations of the very arbitrariness and contingency of life’s connections and directions by crafting his own take on another one of Bresson’s precepts: to find without seeking.”
Gerard-Jan Claes & Stoffel Debuysere1
“For me, a film is good if it provides me with new feelings and modifies my way of thinking. That is why form is so important for me. We all share the same material. But the form we use, leads to different feelings or new ways of questioning, to new desires. So I don’t think I can be defined as formalistic or realistic. These categories simplify things. My first three films could be called formalistic, the last ones a little less so. I am only conscious of my desires.”
Hong Sang-soo2
- 1Gerard-Jan Claes & Stoffel Debuysere, “Hong Sang-soo. Infinite Worlds Possible”, Sabzian, 2020.
- 2Hong Sang-soo in Emmanuel Burdeau, Jean-Philippe Tessé & Antoine Thirion, “‘For me, a film is good if it modifies my way of thinking’. A Conversation with Hong Sang-soo”, Sabzian, 2020.