The Day After – first look review | Little White Lies

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The Day After – first look review

24 May 2017

Words by Manuela Lazic

Two people, an adult and a child, sitting together on a sofa and embracing.
Two people, an adult and a child, sitting together on a sofa and embracing.
Anoth­er day, anoth­er del­i­cate, insight­ful gem from Kore­an direc­tor Hong Sang-soo.

Pro­lif­ic South Kore­an film­mak­er Hong Sang-soo presents his new film, The Day After, in com­pe­ti­tion in Cannes, and it’s his third (and pos­si­bly not final) release of 2017. Once again he uses the most sim­ple cin­e­mat­ic tech­niques to explore infi­deli­ty with yet anoth­er film about an unfaith­ful pro­tag­o­nist. It fol­lows Bong­wan (Kwon Hae­hyo), a book pub­lish­er who cheats on his wife Hae­joo (Cho Yun­hee) with his young assis­tant Chang­sook (Kim Sae­byuk). As so often with Hong, the premise is less inter­est­ing than the director’s pre­cise exe­cu­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion of the mate­r­i­al, and the sim­ple but bril­liant script makes this an unpre­ten­tious, authen­tic moral tale, which is often very fun­ny, if a bit slight.

Through relaxed con­ver­sa­tions over din­ner or cof­fee, Hong makes sweet obser­va­tions about the con­tra­dic­to­ry and tor­tu­ous feel­ings that attrac­tion brings. The con­clu­sions he draws may not be world shat­ter­ing, but they imbue the char­ac­ters with a sense of real­ism that could eas­i­ly have been reduced to cliché. He endears them to us despite their fail­ings. Chang­sook can no longer stand being the oth­er woman, not sim­ply because she can’t have Bong­wan all for her­self, but, more heart­break­ing­ly, because she doesn’t want to love a cow­ard. The affair is reach­ing its end and Bong­wan can’t save it, sim­ply because he knows Chang­sook is right.

The struc­ture of the script is where Hong reveals his sub­tle bril­liance. His strat­e­gy to tack­le his cur­rent favourite sub­ject with orig­i­nal­i­ty is to focus on an in-between moment between two affairs – one end­ing, and one that could be begin­ning. When Chang­sook leaves Bong­wan and his pub­lish­ing house, a new employ­ee arrives and, with­out her notic­ing, comes close to get­ting the wheel spin­ning again. Bong­wan wel­comes Areum (Kim Min­hee) with casu­al­ness and she answers his increas­ing­ly per­son­al ques­tions com­fort­ably, since the con­text of her arrival jus­ti­fies them.

As a qui­et observ­er, Hong lets Bongwan’s ten­den­cy to seduce and be seduced by young women emanate from between the lines, nev­er forc­ing inter­pre­ta­tion on the spec­ta­tor. The long takes allow paus­es and ner­vous laugh­ter to reveal the dis­creet evo­lu­tion of Bong­wan and Areum’s rela­tion­ship with can­dour and del­i­ca­cy. Both are sim­ply open and unaware of what they might get into, but the expec­ta­tion is that Bong­wan would be wary of his own ten­den­cies. Through his breakup with Chang­sook and his meet­ing with Areum, Bongwan’s detached and irre­spon­si­ble atti­tude slow­ly reveals itself.

Hong’s sense of humour erupts when Bongwan’s wife arrives in the office and pre­cip­i­tates the moment to its cri­sis point. Mis­un­der­stand­ings bring light­ness, and even slap­stick vio­lence to this del­i­cate film. Bongwan’s clue­less­ness sud­den­ly becomes urgent and amus­ing­ly absurd. Yet despite this excit­ing tonal shift, Hong starts going in cir­cles and seems to strug­gle to end his film.

The moral les­son he pro­vides is odd­ly cut off from an intense com­e­dy sequence, and doesn’t have the res­o­nance of the film’s oth­er obser­va­tions about rela­tion­ships and self-worth. It’s a pos­i­tive and log­i­cal cop­ing strat­e­gy for Bong­wan, but feels unnec­es­sary and forced. The grey areas and uncer­tain­ties that tor­ment­ed the char­ac­ters through­out the film were more sat­is­fy­ing than the clear-cut solu­tion that final­ly made them go away.

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