Woman on the Beach

Kyle, first off, thanks for reviewing Reprise - a stunner - and not quite getting around to Woman on the Beach, the other film we saw together on Monday.

This is, I believe, my first Korean feature (though I'm getting old and I sometimes forget things), so as I watched I found myself wondering about the the current evolutionary state of the film industry in Korea. Why? Well, Woman on the Beach is almost impossibly naive in a number of ways (I'm thinking cinematography, acting, dialogue), and so the two options that began to form in my mind were that (1) this was all done very deliberately, and referentially in some really cool way - I don't know, to mimic the renewed simplicity of the 1960's French New Wave directors? - or (2) they just make films that look and feel like this in S. Korea.

Particularly after Director Hong Sang-soo was intro'd at the start as perhaps the pre-eminent director in South Korea, I couldn't (and can't) be sure. Taken at face value, Woman on the Beach, which deals in a mix of comedy and drama with a 40-something film director's (I kid you not, Cesc Gay) obsession with his buddy's girflriend, and in a (Hitchcockian?) twist in his conviction that a quite different-looking woman bears a striking resemblance, qualifies as mild and quirky entertainment. It took me ten minutes to get over the fact that it felt like it was made by high school students, and then I bought into it (due I suppose to a plot thread that worked, and a strong performance by the lead woman - Ko Hyeon-geong), until the third act, which dragged on and on (WOTB clocked in at a mind-numbing 128 minutes) and ended needlessly enigmatically. Needless, because at that point the fate of the central relationship was known (sorry, it didn't work out), and frankly, we all just wanted to go for a beer. Or a coffee. Or a walk.

Interestingly, Giovanni Fulvi, in his review in the TIFF guide, described the script as "air-tight". Giovanni, I'll be watching out for you.