In Front of Your Face

Sangok spent years abroad and gave up acting. She returns to Seoul and stays with her sister. Over the course of a day she sees her nephew, visits the house she grew up in, and in the evening meets a director who wants to make a film with her. The audience knows one thing from the start: she is terminally ill and has told nobody. Hong Sang-soo keeps his usual arrangement, the long tables, the soju, the fixed camera and the sudden zoom. What differs here is the weight of the information. Every detail of an ordinary day becomes something else for a person who knows the days are counted. Lee Hye-young's performance carries the entire film, and her face never once explains itself. It screened in the Cannes Premiere section at the 2021 festival. The difficulty is that across eighty five minutes nothing happens, the scenes are long, and to anyone unfamiliar with the director's method it can look like repetition. Who it is for: viewers who follow Hong Sang-soo and like quiet drama. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events.