Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo excels at droll, insightful chamber pieces about bookish, gossipy, self-defeating men. They tend to work in the arts, drink too much, and exasperate the women in their lives.
Hong's 2010 film Oki's Movie, which takes its title from an aspiring Seoul filmmaker, traces the arc of a love triangle in four parts, each opening ironically with Sir Edward Elgar's grandiloquent "Pomp and Circumstance March in D Major, Op. 39, No. 1." Unlike most of his other films, which play chronologically, he shuffles the timeline for his 12th feature.
In "A Day for Incantation," Jingu's wife worries he's been drinking too much. His fellow film school instructors share the same concern. In voice-over, Jingu (repeat Hong player Lee Sun-kyun, a deft, deep-voiced performer) notes that she's been inattentive lately and hasn't been laughing at his jokes. He fears she may be having an affair.
It's more likely that Jingu has cheated on his wife. A friend of a former student even confronts him about it at a public screening. Since Jingu's films are autobiographical, she believes it's fair to criticize his behavior as much as his work.
It doesn't help that he can be testy with students and colleagues, especially when he's been drinking (he has a weakness for Johnny Walker Blue). His ideas and suggestions may be sound, but his approach can be abrasive and insensitive.
In "King of Kisses," which takes place four years beforehand, the unmarried Jingu is the film school's star director. Even more than film, though, he's obsessed with schoolmate Oki (Train to Busan's Jung Yu-mi), to the extent that he's rather boorish about it. She resists his advances at first, possibly because she's more interested in their married mentor, Professor Song (Lee Chang-dong favorite Moon Sun-keun). She also worries that Jingu drinks too much, but can't quite resist his entreaties.
"After the Snowstorm," the shortest section, centers on Professor Song. Even a snowstorm can't stop Jingu and Oki from attending his class, where he doles out pearls of wisdom about life and work as best he can. Though they value his counsel, he doesn't feel particularly effective as an instructor, and that evening after a stomach-upsetting meal, he vows to quit.
In the final section, "Oki's Movie," Oki attempts to make sense of her relationships with "the younger man" and "the older man" by way of a film-within-a-film in which she compares mountain walks she took with Jingu and Professor Song individually. (The previous sections suggest their work or perspectives since only the last features her narration.) Though the film starts out as the story of a man, it ends as the story of a woman.
Though no one would describe Oki's Movie as a revenge film in the conventional sense, the way Hong allows Oki to have the last word gives her back the autonomy Jingu attempted to stifle. While he was busy obsessing over himself and his needs, she became the better person—and possibly even the better filmmaker.
Where does this title belong on library shelves?
Oki's Movie belongs on Korean and foreign film shelves in academic and public libraries with other titles by Hong Sang-soo. It's available individually and as part of a three Blu-ray set with Nobody's Daughter Haewon and Our Sunhi.
What kind of film series could use this title?
Oki's Movie would fit with a series on Hong Sang-soo or contemporary Korean cinema.
What type of instructors will use this title?
Oki's Movie would fit with college-level courses on Korean cinema and culture.