Introduction – first-look review | Little White Lies

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Intro­duc­tion – first-look review

02 Mar 2021

Words by Matt Turner

Two people, a man and a woman, looking at each other intensely in a black and white image.
Two people, a man and a woman, looking at each other intensely in a black and white image.
A young man trav­els to Berlin in the lat­est lilt­ing rela­tion­ship dra­ma from South Korea’s Hong Sang-soo.

Hong Sang-soo has been cre­at­ing films for a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry now. He made his debut aged 35 with The Day a Pig Fell into the Well in 1996 and has since direct­ed a fur­ther 24 fea­tures. Though all his films are some­what alike – inti­mate dra­mas which see rotat­ing sets of char­ac­ters inter­act­ing with­in closed inte­ri­ors or while walk­ing through pub­lic space – his style has evolved over time.

His ear­li­est films were his most volatile, fea­tur­ing lots of sex, drink­ing, quar­relling and ample male angst. More recent­ly he has mel­lowed some­what, and many of the films he has made since 2011’s The Day He Arrives are defined by their for­mal exper­i­men­ta­tions, involv­ing puz­zle-like struc­tures and sto­ries which shift, reset, or repeat. From 2017’s Claire’s Cam­era onwards, Hong start­ed to sim­pli­fy his films, cre­at­ing novel­la-like works with more straight­for­ward sce­nar­ios and short­er run-times. This most recent suite of films are some of his most sat­is­fy­ing, and this is true of Intro­duc­tion too.

The film cen­tres on an uncer­tain rela­tion­ship between young cou­ple Young­ho (Shin Seokho) and Juwon (Park Miso), out­lined over three acts in which a num­ber of oth­er char­ac­ters grav­i­tate around them. In the first sec­tion, Young­ho is called to his doc­tor father’s (Kim Young­ho) clin­ic in Seoul, only to be left sit­ting lim­i­nal­ly in the wait­ing room. In the sec­ond, he flies to Berlin to sur­prise Juwon, who is study­ing there and liv­ing with Kim Min-hee’s unnamed char­ac­ter, well cast as a too-cool-for-school artist who sports a top-knot and round spectacles.

In the third, sea­side-set sec­tion, it is Youngho’s moth­er (Cho Yun­hee) who beck­ons him, hav­ing him meet with a boozy vet­er­an actor (Ki Joobong) who berates Young­ho for aban­don­ing his career in act­ing. In each sce­nario, Young­ho trav­els some­where pur­po­sive­ly, only to engage in con­ver­sa­tions that end in ambi­gu­i­ty. Each sequence doesn’t so much resolve as dis­si­pate, dis­solv­ing into slow fades-to-black that land on end-notes which are entic­ing­ly inconclusive.

Oth­er than these fade-outs, Hong’s cam­era is not showy; the direc­tor most­ly uses sta­t­ic shots or makes minor move­ments, only very infre­quent­ly employ­ing those sig­na­ture zooms that he finds so irre­sistible. Shot in a stark black-and-white, the over­all feel of the film is cool, even chilly, full of snowy white skies and win­try fab­rics, favour­ing remote­ness in its emo­tion­al temperament.

The char­ac­ters are con­vivial – espe­cial­ly Young­ho, who is played by Seokho as boy­ish and buoy­ant – but they nev­er quite con­nect, remain­ing dis­tanced from each oth­er both lit­er­al­ly (as in Youngho’s fail­ure to ever actu­al­ly meet his father, or his unex­plained breakup with Juwon) or metaphor­i­cal­ly (as in the geo­graph­ic dis­tance of the cou­ple across coun­tries, or the emo­tion­al estrange­ment that occurs between father and son).

The film’s most dra­mat­ic scene comes, unsur­pris­ing­ly, after a few too many shots of soju. Young­ho aggra­vates the famous actor by telling him he quit act­ing due to a dis­com­fort with its fun­da­men­tal dis­hon­esty. After reveal­ing that he refused to do a kiss­ing scene because he felt it would be unfaith­ful to his part­ner, Young­ho pro­fess­es that, When a man embraces a woman, that act con­tains a cer­tain absolute mean­ing.” The actor explodes, scream­ing, Whether sin­cere or play­ing around, it is all love!”

It’s not clear with which posi­tion Hong’s own opin­ion of act­ing aligns, but the direc­tor keeps cre­at­ing con­sis­tent­ly fas­ci­nat­ing explo­rations of the ten­sions that this dis­agree­ment evokes. In each mes­mer­i­cal­ly sim­ple new film, he push­es his char­ac­ters into qui­et col­li­sions with each oth­er in order to see what mean­ings these acts can contain.

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