On the Beach at Night Alone

A Korean film in two parts. Younghee is an actress. She had a relationship with a married director, it became known, and she went to Hamburg for a while to disappear. The first part takes place there. She walks in a park with a friend, drinks coffee, discusses whether the man will come, and they stop on a bridge. The second part is in Korea. Younghee goes to a coastal town, meets old acquaintances, and sits at drinking tables. From there the film is made of long conversations. The camera is fixed, the cuts are few, and the scenes run until they finish. Younghee hardens as she drinks. She tells the people at the table that none of them knows how to love, and nobody can answer. What the narrative is interested in is not the relationship but shame: the film is about a woman who does not know what to do with what is being said about her, and it does not prove her right. There is a strange figure in the middle. A man in black appears in both parts, wipes windows, and nobody looks at him; the narrative never explains him. Whether the beach section at the end is a dream or not is unclear, and the film deliberately leaves that too. The production's relation to real life made it a matter of argument. The relationship between the director and his lead actress was in the news in Korea at the time and the narrative leans on it openly. Kim Min-hee won the Best Actress award at the Berlin Film Festival for the part. Kim Min-hee, Seo Young-hwa and Jung Jae-young are in the cast. Hong Sang-soo wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes slow Korean cinema built on talk. Who it is not for: anyone looking for incident; the film takes place almost entirely at tables and on walks.