{"id":5114,"date":"2020-09-27T21:49:14","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T04:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5114"},"modified":"2020-09-27T21:52:07","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T04:52:07","slug":"korea-blog-the-cinematic-romantic-collaboration-of-hong-sangsoo-and-kim-min-hee-evolves-in-the-woman-who-ran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5114","title":{"rendered":"Korea Blog: The Cinematic-Romantic Collaboration of Hong Sangsoo and Kim Min-Hee Evolves in “The Woman Who Ran”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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If at all possible, do try to see\u00a0The Woman Who Ran\u00a0<\/em>(\ub3c4\ub9dd\uce5c \uc5ec\uc790), the new picture by Korean auteur and international film-festival habitu\u00e9 Hong Sangsoo, at Seoul\u2019s Emu Cinema. I recommend that particular venue in part because it offers occasional English-subtitled screenings for non-Korean-speakers, but more so because it appears as a major location in the movie itself. Watching Hong\u2019s films in Seoul is like\u00a0watching \u00c9ric Rohmer\u2019s films in Paris<\/a>: the characters tend to encounter one another and fall into meandering, insistent conversations in places you recognize from everyday life, and indeed may have passed through on your way to the theater. But it\u2019s one thing to watch a movie in the city where it takes place, and quite another to watch its protagonist take a seat in the very same screening room in which you\u2019re seated yourself.<\/p>

That protagonist, a 30-something Seoul florist named Gam-hee, is played by Kim Min-hee, star of seven out of Hong\u2019s last eight movies. It says something about Hong\u2019s prolificacy that these constitute only the latest period in his career, during whose 24 years he\u2019s directed exactly as many features. For his dedicated followers, myself included, the wait for\u00a0The Woman Who Ran<\/em>\u00a0felt worryingly long, his previous work\u00a0Hotel by the River<\/em>\u00a0(\uac15\ubcc0 \ud638\ud154) having come out all the way back in 2018. In that film Kim\u2019s character checks into the titular small-town lodgings, some distance from the capital, after breaking up with her married lover. That same year also saw the release of\u00a0Grass<\/em>\u00a0(\ud480\uc78e\ub4e4), an hourlong novella of a picture built around the eavesdropping conducted by Kim\u2019s amateur novelist from the corner table of a Seoul coffee shop.<\/p>

The year before that, Hong directed three films. In\u00a0The Day After<\/em>\u00a0(\uadf8 \ud6c4) Kim plays an assistant at a small publishing house physically attacked on her first day of work by the boss\u2019 wife, who confuses her with the girl she suspects he keeps on the side. This also turns out to be her last day of work, and Kim\u2019s character in\u00a0Claire\u2019s Camera<\/em>(\ud074\ub808\uc5b4\uc758 \uce74\uba54\ub77c), a film-distribution company employee, experiences similar professional difficulties. Her boss fires her on a trip to Cannes with seemingly inexplicable suddenness, and only later does it come clear that both of them have been surreptitiously involved with the same film director. This followed the also partially Europe-set\u00a0On the Beach at Night Alone<\/em>\u00a0(\ubc24\uc758 \ud574\ubcc0\uc5d0\uc11c \ud63c\uc790), which features another of Kim\u2019s performances as an actress and erstwhile filmmaker\u2019s mistress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Read the whole thing at the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If at all possible, do try to see\u00a0The Woman Who Ran\u00a0(\ub3c4\ub9dd\uce5c \uc5ec\uc790), the new picture by Korean auteur and international film-festival habitu\u00e9 Hong Sangsoo, at Seoul\u2019s Emu Cinema. I recommend that particular venue in part because it offers occasional English-subtitled screenings for non-Korean-speakers, but more so because it appears as a major location in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-korea-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5114"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5120,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions\/5120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}