International Cinema
Tuesday, November 22nd at 7:30 PM
Hong Sangsoo’s
THE NOVELIST’S FILM
Members $10 | Public $15
Junhee (Lee Hyeyoung, last seen in Hong Sangsoo’s In
Front of Your Face) is a novelist who has grown disenchanted with her own
writing. On a trip to see an old friend, she runs into a film director who was
set to adapt one of her novels before the project fell through. One chance
encounter leads to another and soon she finds herself having lunch with Kilsoo
(Kim Minhee), a well-known actress also questioning her role as an
artist. It’s then that Junhee has an epiphany: she will make a film starring
Kilsoo. It won’t be like other films. It will be the novelist’s film.
For his 27th feature, Hong Sangsoo holds a
mirror up to his own artistic process and asks what exactly it is we’re looking
for from a work of art. As his characters discuss their lives and work and the
ways they intertwine, Hong sets down a sort of manifesto for his own inimitable
oeuvre before exploding it (or perhaps fully realizing it) in a moving final
flourish. With sparkling performances from Lee, Kim and an incredible cast of
Hong regulars, The Novelist’s Film is a summation of Hong’s
career-long artistic project, even as it signals bold new directions. (South
Korea, 2022, 92 min., Black & White and Color, In Korean with English
subtitles, DCP | Writer-Director: Hong Sangsoo)
