A retired director who lives in the province, Yoo Sungjoon, goes back to Seoul in the winter with the sole purpose of visiting a dear friend, Young-ho, a former actor. After not being able to get together with his friend on the first day of his arrival, Sungjoon walks through the freezing streets and enters a bar where he gets drunk with a group of strangers (3 very-young film students) and ends up paying a pathetic visit to his ex-girlfriend, with whom he keeps an unfinished relationship since he used to live in that city. This simple anecdote is used by South-Korean master of filmmaking, Hong Sang-soo, to build what might be the most exquisite and depurated film out of the almost twenty movies he has shot so far, among them such outstanding ones as Woman Is the Future of Man (2004), Conte de Cinéma (2005), Woman on the Beach (2006), and Hahaha (2010).

In The Day He Arrives (Un Certain Regard, Cannes, 2011) the tale departs further and further from the mere anecdote as a delicate comedy about the lack of love takes shape in the different variations made by Sang-soo of a same ritualistic scene: Sungjoon, his friend Young-ho and many other characters get together at the “Novel” bar to perform three actions that confer a cinematic rhythm to the film: drinking large amounts of soju, smoking countless cigarettes, and ingesting food; and also, of course, talking about their lives. Sometimes the two friends appear in company of a colleague of Young, who is immediately attracted to Young’s buddy; some other times they are with the owner of the bar, a woman who is strikingly similar to Sungjoon’s ex-girlfriend and with whom he ends up having a fling; while yet other times they are with an old friend, or a female film teacher whom the protagonist met in the street. The characters who appear in these delicately surrealistic narrative bubbles and their everyday actions are reference points of Sungjoon’s inner landscape; they represent the multiple faces of a dramatic polyhedron of this self-centered anti-hero who likes women and drinking, and whose most visible talents consist in an enviable capacity for drinking and seducing, and a unsuspected capacity for playing piano.

Versatile and brilliant in its form however basic its appearance might be, The Day He Arrives recalls one of those sweet hangovers to which tobacco and spirits bestow a cinematic air; this film shows a parody of a film director while portraying the genius and humbleness needed for achieving the craft of one of the greatest filmmakers in our times.

Maximiliano Cruz

Director

Hong Sang-soo

Production

KIm Kyounghee

Screen Writer

Hong Sang-soo

Photography

Kim Hyungkoo

Edition

Hahm Sungwon

Sound

Kim Mir. Música: Jeong Yongjin

Screen Writer

Yu Junsang,
Kim Sangjoong,
Song Sunmi,
Kim Bokyung

Filmography

Book chon bang hyang | El día que él llega | The
Day He Arrives• 2011, Oki's Movie • 2010, Hahaha
• 2010, Like You Know It All • 2009, Night and Day •
2008, Woman on the Beach • 2006, A Tale of Cinema
• 2005, Woman Is the Future of Man • 2004, Turning
Gate • 2002, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors
• 2000, The Power of Kangwon Province • 1998, The
Day a Pig Fell into a Well • 1996

Festivals

Festival de Cannes, 2011
Sección Una Cierta Mirada

Festival Internacional de Cine de Melbourne, 2011
Sección Estilos de Asia

Festival Internacional de Cine de Estocolmo, 2011
Sección Imágenes Asiáticas