Yeojaneun namjaui miraeda - (Woman is the future of man)

Director: Sang-soo Hong

Somehow this film ended up on top of my queue and I was kind of surprised to see Martin Scorcese's two minute introductory clip for this film in the DVD. I am not a big fan of Martin Scorsese. I consider his movies a stopover in one's journey in the cinema to the exciting territories of Tarkovskys, Antonionis and Kar-Wais of the world. He hangs onto characters and as Ted Goransson so sharply pointed out, latches his camera-eye to character's coat tails. This makes him more of a movie murderer of so many cinematic possibilities than a real movie director. You get kicked around with a Taxi Driver or be made to hang out with a wannabe gangster who is trying awkwardly to keep his cool when his partner shoots the waiter. For sure, there are some great films which are popular too like the great character essay in Raging Bull or the Catholic guilt-fest in Mean Streets and infact two of his unknown films: Afterhours and We don't live here anymore are so off the track, the regular Marty track, that they seem to exist in a vacuum. So, his auteur-ship came in front of the camera and introduced this film, I was pleasantly surprised and at the same time it unnerved me to see him making grand statements about this film. As usual, he went straight to what he thought best about this film which was in his opinion those great "characters" but then he said it was like peeling an orange (a metaphor he borrowed from someone) and finding layers of reality underneath.

The film plunges us in a simple situation of two friends meeting up after a long time and catching up on a few beers and shots of Korean rice liquor. There are flashbacks interspersed in-between the scene that neatly complements the dialogue: the half-spoken word-truths, the gestures and the uneasiness of two old friends trying to seek out connections and old memories. This is Rohmer territory but it is framed in a different way. That is where the film has a major problem. It relies on the secrets these three friends (film has only three characters: a girl who had been involved with two friends at different points in the past) hold back from each other and memories that they share to create a drama. Naturally, Martin Scorsese was raving about it: Characters' shared reality charged with smart dialogue that carried the secrets of the past and viewer as God in the know of everything. But, it looked like watching a play than a movie. It didn't take me anywhere viscerally, it kept a safe distance from exploring the emotional flux in between the characters, lest we, as viewers, get burnt. The result is a film which is boring and a little ridiculous.