On the Beach at Night Alone (Rétrospective Hong Sangsoo)

On the Beach at Night Alone   

Bamui Haebyeoneseo Honja Corée du Sud 2017 | Hong Sangsoo | vostEN | 101’ | digital | Cast : Kim Minhee, Seo Younghwa, Kwon Haehyo

► Best Actress (Kim Min-hee), Berlinale 2017

The actress Younghee, stressed by a heavily mediatised relationship with a married director in Korea, has come to Hamburg. He has said he’ll join her, but she mistrusts him. Is he missing her now, like she misses him? Back in Korea, she meets friends but ends up on a beach alone. How important is love in one’s life? Younghee wants to know.

« Younghee’s deeply insightful, bitterly frank, and poetically passionate temperament emerges in a series of long and far-reaching conversations with friends which Hong films in long takes with brusque zooms and pans matching her decisive vigor. For all its intimacy, the drama has a vast scope, a fierce intensity, and an element of metaphysical whimsy, which all come to life in the indelibly expressive spontaneity of Kim’s performance. » (The New Yorker)