Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Film Laugh and Cringe at Your Own Social Ineptitude!
Posted by Mark Asch on Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 10:51 AM
Ku (Kim Tae-woo), a middle-aged director of films that sound, as described, much like Hong's (down even to his disavowal of any autobiographical content), is enlisted for the jury panel of a film festival; he nods off during daytime screenings and engages in sniping and passive-aggressive one-upsmanship with his colleagues and rivals at cocktail parties and hotel-room all-nighters—no joke is too petty—before going out boozing an erratic old friend, and emisreading the boundaries set by his handled-with-care wife.
In act two, as the guest lecturer at a film school class, Ku repeats the whole experience—a less-than-hero's welcome, social jockeying barely disguised as collegial drinks (arm wrestling is most definitely involved, in a perfect encapsulation of Hong's inevitably zero-sum interaction), and the intrusion of an old friend and a spouse sending off signals which, if not mixed, are at least perplexing to the self-involved Ku (whose occasional voice-overs offer a distinctly personal understanding of events). This mirrored narrative, itself mirroring almost all of Hong's earlier films, asks whether us "insular" types will ever actually learn from experience—and knows the answer.
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