A film director is in his hometown of Seoul for a night, fails to connect with a friend, hangs out with some students and gets drunk then looks up an old flame. The film director is in his hometown of Seoul for a night, connects with his friend, they hang out with a woman the friend knows named Boram and the owner of the Novel bar. A film director is in his hometown of Seoul for a night, connects with his friend and a former lead actor, and they all go to the Novel Bar. But the movie title is the first clue that these are alternate versions of the same day with recurring characters in different situations. I lost track of the female characters, but in my defense it’s all kinda disorienting. Ah, further in my defense: the old flame and the bar owner are the same actress.
Boram with the film director:
Our lead filmmaker is Joon-sang Yoo of at least five other Hong movies, and his buddy’s friend Boram from at least parts 2 & 3 was Seon-mi Song of Woman on the Beach, which is also about a film director hanging out with his friend. The only other Hong movie I’ve seen is Oki’s Movie, which also involved variations and repetition – I’m assuming from reading some reviews that most of his movies do. Played at Cannes UCR with Elena, which I watched the day before this. Dialogue-heavy with unshowy compositions, then one zoom per scene – I started to wait for the zoom, wonder when it would come. Pleasant viewing, gets more engrossing as the day(s) roll on, but didn’t leave me with an aftertaste of joy and wonder like Oki’s Movie did.
L-R: bar owner, the friend, the actor
QuintÃn:
The last scene of The Day He Arrives can be seen as a correction to the scene in Oki’s Movie where a young filmmaker refuses to allow his picture to be taken by a woman he meets in the park. This time, a woman says that she’s an admirer of the filmmaker, and when she asks him to pose for a photograph, he answers that he doesn’t like to do it but he complies anyway … Over the course of the film, Sungjoon experiences the usual bittersweet encounters with women, but also finds himself in a rather hostile film milieu, where he is harassed by film students, people don’t remember him or don’t like him or the other way around. In this last scene, where an unknown woman shows she cares for his work, Sungjoon seems to feel that nothing is wrong with his place in life, even if there might not be another film in his future. Hong’s previous films were always about a guy keeping pace of his career and feeling unsure about his work, whether he was successful or not.
