The Day He Arrives

Seongjun, a director who made two films and then stopped, comes to Seoul from the provinces. He means to see a close friend who lives in Bukchon. He cannot find the friend, so he walks the streets, drops in on an old girlfriend, runs into a professor from film school, and ends the evening at a bar called Novel. The next day is almost identical. So is the one after. The film is built in five unequal parts and repeats the same scenes with small changes: the same encounter with the same woman on the same street, the same conversation in the same bar, the same drunkenness. The repetition is not a puzzle. It shows a man who cannot get out of his own nature, making the same promises each time and breaking them the same way. Hong Sang-soo wrote and directed. It was shot in black and white. It premiered on 19 May 2011 at the 64th Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard. The volume of drink in the bar scenes and the drift of the talk are the stamp of Hong's whole body of work. What differs here is a structure openly built with a nod to the French New Wave. Who it is for: anyone who likes Hong Sang-soo or small films that play with structure. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events. Almost nothing happens, scenes repeat on purpose, and the lead stays unlikeable to the end.