Working with his usual stock players and covering virtually all technical roles by himself, from writer-director-producer to editing, music, lighting and sound, South Korea’s prolific Hong Sang-soo opens another highly personal story front in his cinematic opus with Walk Up. Though like most of his recent films it is a standalone tale, it has such remarkable fidelity to Hong’s purposes and aesthetic that it seems part of one never-ending story. This is good news for Finecut, who can count on the director’s worldwide distributors and art house fans to step forward. After initial bows in Toronto and San Sebastian, this whimsical account of an out-of-work film director and the women in his life will amuse the faithful and maybe pick up some new recruits, fascinated by the film’s relaxed simplicity and its sophisticated manipulation of time. It is one of the quieter films in his repertoire, however, and calls for a meditative frame of mind to be fully savored.
The film is significantly shot in often over-exposed black and white, which combines with the old Mini driven by the main character Byungsoo to flash the action back into the past, giving it a whiff of the Nouvelle Vague. Time does indeed play a major role here, and the jumbled chronology of the scenes will keep viewers on their toes sorting out cause and effect.
Just how autobiographically we should take Byungsoo (Kwon Hae-hyo, the philandering publisher in The Day After), or indeed any of Hong’s onscreen avatars, is another question to ponder. There is a certain crepuscular pathos in the middle-aged hero, who is a celebrated filmmaker honored with retrospectives of his work abroad, but whose financial backers have abandoned him. He is in the middle of a career crisis as the film begins.
It is the day Byungsoo brings his 20-ish daughter Jeongsu (Park Misu) to see Ms. Kim (Lee Hye-yeong, who played the retired actress in In Front of Your Face.) From the heavy innuendos, one might suppose the wealthy, elegant and alcoholic Ms. Kim is a former lover of Byungsoo’s, someone he has not seen in a long time. Now he needs her: his daughter wants to study interior design and Kim is well-known in the field. She could get the girl started.
But first Kim insists on showing them the cozy building she owns on a quiet street. The tour of the property includes a basement she keeps as a personal office, a restaurant, a residence on the floor above it, and on the top an artist’s attic with a terrace and a view. When Byungsoo is called away for work, Kim breaks out the wine and chats with his daughter.
He never returns from his meeting and the next scene jumps to a random visit he pays to Ms. Kim years later. They sit down in the restaurant where Kim introduces him to the proprietor, a hard-working single woman and a big fan of his films. Her off-the-cuff analysis could serve as a critique of Walk Up itself (or maybe it reflects Hong Sang-soo’s own self-evaluation): funny, enjoyable and easy to relate to, and so relaxing she sometimes puts a film on in the background at home to keep her company.
After four bottles of wine, tongues are loosened and Ms. Kim turns the conversation to money: the price of the wine they’re drinking, her renters paying late. She offers to rent for half price to Byungsoo, who has just won a big cash award for directing. He clearly loves his work, but there’s a catch. Though art forms like painting have nothing to do with money, he says, making movies is all about money. He angrily confesses that the film he’s been prepping for a year, which he was going to shoot abroad, has been canceled by the producer. He’s out of work.
Later, we see that he has indeed taken Kim up on her offer to live in her building, where she has the numerical key to every door (humorously announced by sound effects) and reads the tenants’ mail before they do. Perhaps she’s not too happy that he’s living with another woman. An illness has put his career on pause, and he wonders if he should move out, maybe live alone…
Although the great dramas and huge dinner fights from his early films are absent here, Hong’s fixed frame camera uncovers plenty of emotional tension swirling around one aging man surrounded by women who protect him, but also pry and demand from him. The bright, talkative cast fits together like the inside of a watch, and life drifts through their chance encounters, while the search for its meaning is constantly postponed. Perhaps that’s why Hong’s editing jumps back and forth in time, giving his characters a chance to relive bits of their lives and find the probable causes for what has happened.
Director, producer, screenplay, cinematography, editing, music, sound: Hong Sang-soo
Cast: Kwon Hae-hyo, Lee Hye-yeong, Song Seon-mi, Park Miso, Cho Yun-hee, Shin Seok-ho
Production company: Jeonwonsa Film Co. (South Korea)
World Sales: Finecut
Venue: San Sebastian Film Festival Film Festival (Competition)
In Korean
97 minutes
