Review of the Day They Come Back – another round of slow, crisp beer really arrives | Video

MeIt will not surprise fans of the famous Korean actor Hong Sang-soo that his new black and white film – which can be described as “experimental” by those who do not realize that they all look like this – consists of long shots, shot from a single camera, fixed, with conversations in a restaurant. Nor will they be surprised that one of these images has a sudden, unsightly appearance—at close quarters, for no apparent reason.

It won’t come as a surprise to them that the film features someone playing a middle-aged star reflecting on his career and life choices (a staple of the Hong trope). And it should come as no surprise that the film features a character who orders a beer or two before sunset on a patio. No one in the movies, or in any art, or in any part of public life, anywhere in the world, is more devoted to afternoon drinking than Hong Sang-soo.

All the characters are there, but for me, they come together more convincingly here than in any of his other recent work; it has an unrelenting sense of mystery and mystery, starting with the proverb of the title.

Song Seon-mi plays Jeong-su, a famous 40-year-old actress who apparently took a break from motherhood and then went through a divorce, and, as a single mother, returns in a low-budget movie that she is now asking about. There are three of them, back to back, and the interviewers are almost interchangeable, one of the film’s almost undetectable structural comedy. Well-spoken, polite women who are about 15 years older than Jeong-su; and apparently they have a brief from their editors to focus on the public interest side, asking not much about the film – which we learn nothing about, another childish joke – but how Jeong-su feels.

They ask their interviewers if they would like a drink. Many say no. He is not comfortable answering questions about the divorce at first, but then opens up with tears, advising the girl not to live without love. When an interviewer tells her about the fight she just got into with her boyfriend, Jeong-su seems relieved, even as the interviewer thanks her for the “childlike cold that you have… like a little child”. There are two “break” scenes between the three dialogues where Jeong-su is smoking or smoking outside, regretting that he has said too much. Later, she shows us that for all her gentleness, she is as tough as any Hollywood diva, calling an interviewer on her phone, asking for some answers to be taken down and asking for approval.

At this point, the film looks like a satire, not too far removed from Hugh Grant’s Horse and Hound scenes in Richard Curtis’ Notting Hill drama. And many reality stars have commented on the painful experience in several interviews and felt it was getting worse. But later Jeong-su goes to an acting class that she told the interviewer about; it wasn’t just part of the humility he learned, he has this class. And his first task is fictional: rehearsing an interview he has just done, with a schoolmate playing the role of a journalist. Interestingly, Jeong-su intertwines the three dialogues as much as possible, but begins to combine things he has never said before – Buddhist observations on what is real and what is not and when and if one is living life to the fullest.

This fourth discussion, far from being a fictional or speculative version of the first three, is similar to it. It is no more developed than the first three encounters and it is also possible to provide a real personal experience. There are no close-ups or stabbing music to let you know that something important is going on in Jeong-su’s head, the way you’d make a different kind of movie, and that he’s had a few beers isn’t represented as wrong or careless or all that matters. The conversation is always heard at the same volume, tempo and speed. The movie doesn’t quite define itself as a short story…and it’s quietly captivating.