Tale of Cinema

The film is split in two. In the first part a young man runs into someone he used to know and they decide to kill themselves together. In the second, an unemployed director watches that film in a cinema, comes out, sees the actress from it on the street and follows her. It is not interested in the game of a film within a film. It is interested in a viewer taking possession of what he has seen: the director applies the story to his own life, says the same lines and makes the same mistakes. The film shows this with irony and without pity. The form is Hong Sang-soo's usual arrangement: long static takes, sudden zooms, drinking tables and repeating situations. The similarities between the two parts are deliberate and push the audience to wonder which one is real. The film was selected for competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005. Kim Sang-kyung plays the director and Uhm Ji-won the actress. Who it is for: viewers who like Hong Sang-soo's cinema and games of structure. Who it is not for: anyone who wants closeness to a character. The men are deliberately weak and selfish, and the film rescues them nowhere.