The Day After

Bongwan runs a small publishing house. He had an affair with a woman and she left the job. His wife finds a letter. A new employee starts the same day: it is Areum's first. The wife comes to the office and takes Areum for that woman. She slaps her, shouts, will not hear the explanation. Areum tries to account for herself. Bongwan says nothing. Then the other woman comes back. Areum finishes her first day of work in the middle of all these people and by evening still does not know what she has done. Hong Sang-soo writes and directs. Kwon Hae-hyo, Kim Min-hee, Kim Sae-byuk and Cho Yun-hee are in the cast. It is a South Korean production. The film was shot in black and white. It screened in the main competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Its form disturbs time; the scenes do not run in order and the same room repeats on different days. The matter it treats is blame landing on the wrong person; Areum has done nothing and meets all the anger. The director's usual elements are here too: long scenes at a table, drinking, and conversations that run in one take. The character Kim Min-hee plays is the only person standing upright in it; she asks questions and gets no answers. Its limit is method; the narrative builds a repeating structure and there is little event. Who it is for: viewers who like Hong Sang-soo's cinema and films built on talk. Who it is not for: it is slow, repetitive, and the ending unresolved.