A film by Hong Sang-soo
With: Song Sun-mi, Cho Yun-hee, Park Mi-so, Kim Seon-jin, Oh Yun-su, Kang So-yi, Ha Seong-guk, Shin Seok-ho
She has just finished the shoot of an independent film and now has to give three interviews about it. Afterwards, in her acting class, her teacher asks her to reenact the interviews. But for some reason, she is unable to remember them.
Our rate : ★
Hong San-Soo is in a very amused mood, trying to talk to the Germans by hinting at the existence of a German restaurant in South Korea. Very minimalist in form, the film establishes a narrative concept and explores its effects. The first pokes fun at interviews with journalists who claim to be film critics but are actually interviewing star actresses. With no interesting questions or answers, the fading star and the influencer end up discussing banalities, everyday life, nothing in particular, except that Hong San Soo also enjoys showing the mutual hypocrisy of the exercise, between politeness, flattery, and caution about showing disagreement, both needing the interview for their own personal ends. These first three parts, while repetitive, offer three variations that are rather funny, if not profound or intellectually satisfying (San Soo simply mocks their vacuity). Then, in the fourth and fifth parts, San Soo offers a new variation, a counter mise en abyme, in which the actress uses the exercise she has just done, answering questions, as the main plot of an acting exercise, the basis for a scene to be rehearsed in a play. It closes the loop, and could have been clever, but strangely, this rebound doesn’t work and, on the contrary, distances us a little from the lightness of the first part, which contained a few gray areas that the finale tends to demystify.