Every year, sometime after the Chicago International Film Festival announces its schedule, I find myself having the same conversation. A colleague will sigh, “Can you believe the festival isn’t showing such-and-such? It got so many good reviews at [fill-in-the-blank] Film Festival earlier this year.”
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And yet only three of Hong’s ten features since 2005—Woman on the Beach (2006), Night and Day (2008), and The Day He Arrives (2011)—have screened theatrically in Chicago, forcing us locals to watch most of his recent work at home. Thankfully, Like You Know It All (2009) and the Cannes-honored Hahaha (2010) are available on Hulu; and this summer Kino Lorber released In Another Country (2012), Hong’s rather funny collaboration with Isabelle Huppert, on Region 1 DVD. Unfortunately, Tale of Cinema (2005) and Oki’s Movie (2010), two of the director’s most poignant and self-critical films, are harder to come by; and who knows when the two features he made this year—Nobody’s Daughter Haewon and Our Sunhi—will turn up here.
In short, Chicago audiences haven’t been able to follow Hong’s artistic evolution—which is too bad, as it’s one of the most exciting things happening in cinema today. I can understand why exhibitors might be hesitant to screen Hong’s movies, considering how similar they appear on the surface. Every one of his features contains several, if not all, of the following: socially awkward interactions involving academics and/or filmmakers, often taken from Hong’s own experience; comically self-deluded protagonists; long scenes that transpire in single takes and with relatively little camera movement; lots of drinking; travel; precise, minimalist compositions; dream sequences; wry, observational humor concerning romantic and professional one-upmanship; and novelistic coincidences. It may sound like the director is simply repeating a formula, yet Hong has found innumerable ways to recombine these elements, using them to meditate on different themes from film to film.
