The Novelist's Film

One day the novelist Jun-hee leaves the city and goes to the bookshop of a colleague she has not seen for a long time. They talk. Then she walks out and, on an observation tower, runs into a director she knows. That director was going to film her book and did not. Then in a park she meets an actress; the woman has given up acting. Jun-hee makes her a proposal: let us shoot a short film, with no script, without knowing what it is. Through the day one conversation follows another. Hong Sang-soo wrote, directed, photographed, scored and edited it. Lee Hye-young, Kim Min-hee, Seo Young-hwa and Kwon Hae-hyo are in the cast. It is a South Korean production. The film screened in the main competition of the 72nd Berlin Film Festival on 16 February 2022 and won the Silver Bear grand jury prize. It is Hong Sang-soo's fourth award at Berlin. The film is in black and white and uses very few locations. The narrative proceeds in long fixed shots; the camera rarely moves and the scenes are not cut. The matter it treats is why anyone works; everyone is trying to explain why they do something or why they stopped. The dialogue is everyday and polite; the real tension is in what is not said. The film also discusses its own way of being made; the idea of shooting without a crew or a script is inside the story. The ending closes with a passage in colour. Its limit is scale; nothing happens, the pace is very slow, and it resembles the director's other films. Who it is for: viewers who like Hong Sang-soo and films built on conversation. Who it is not for: it is uneventful, repetitive, and the ending plain.