The death of the author is the birth of the reader, as we know from post-structuralist thought; then again, there are Hong Sangsoo’s public remarks. A charming video I often revisit shows the South Korean filmmaker outlining his working method: script dialogue completed the day of (also common on big Hollywood productions), followed by a light-speed editing assembly. But at a public Q&A in Locarno following the premiere of his latest, By the Stream, he revealed a shift; a day now separates his writing and location-shooting. Turning over his new film and this year’s other premiere, A Traveler’s Needs, the extra hours of composition and finessing are evident.
So how about Spot the Difference––which we cynically might call being on Hong world-premiere-reviewing duty. Yet By the Stream’s departures, and relatedly its virtues, are a bit more pronounced. Its running time almost grazes two hours––more typical in the pre-2010 era when he was shooting on film and corralling larger production resources––and the human observations avoid a glancing vignette form; true to the title, it’s a long soak in a certain kind of soulful, middle-class malaise, not far removed from John Cassavetes’ more restrained films.
If Hong’s self-repetition can cause doubt, there’s something equally reassuring seeing his two stars, Kim Minhee and Kwon Haehyo, take up space in a two-shot, their figures seen from the knee upwards. The former is Jeonim, a textiles artist and lecturer at a Seoul women’s college; the latter plays her uncle Sieon, an actor and director banished from his once-eminent career in the aftermath of a scandal (that’s only opaquely explained in the script) and now the proprietor of a bookshop in the Kangwon Province. Sieon has been called upon by her adoring, seldom-seen niece to, proverbially, recover his sea legs: he has to devise an informal skit for her Western Art class to perform at semester’s end, after the previous director (Ha Seongguk, incarnating youthful folly in recent Hongs) also exited the troupe in disgrace. And we know the “why” more starkly: he “separately” dated three members of the group, who all dropped out in solidarity.
Sieon is introduced into this new environment with the regular mealtime (and makgeolli-imbibing) company of Jeong (Cho Yunhee), Jeonim’s department boss, who also happens to be a besotted fan of his previous work. A lengthy sequence at a restaurant specializing in spicy eel utterly reels you in; working and embracing color on self-shooting DP duty, there’s more clarity in the ensemble-staging master shot to glimpse the non-speaking actor’s reaction. As a viewer, you equally feel present at this table while detachedly admiring how Hong can create these subtle lifts of dramatic escalation.
With A Traveler’s Needs’ elaborating a quite old-fashioned notion of the “feminine mystique,” it’s also worth gently parsing this film’s gender politics. It’s very enticing to look at various public figures and reflect on their stances on culture-war issues––however this situation, online and elsewhere, is impacted by assorted actors operating in bad faith. By the Stream is a bit of a comfortable cradle for bad men, for difficult men, who’ve faced opprobrium in the court of public opinion, but of course there’s nothing didactic about this; amidst the cozy pleasures, it’s one way by which Hong lobs us a more timely, direct provocation, making this a fuller consideration of the MeToo-adjacent issues first seen in his pandemic-era In Front of Your Face.
There’s so much more to consider––about art, craft, philosophy, and deadpan in-camera editing––but I wager future academic monographs and Taschen coffee table books have us covered. Contra even 2017-18, consistent theatrical distribution has expanded Hong’s name beyond the festival bubble. Reliably excellent work like By the Stream is why, and more will be with us next year.
By the Stream premiered at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival and will arrive stateside from Cinema Guild.