The Day She Returns

From Viennale

An examination of memory, interpretation and, naturally, artistic creation, Hong Sangsoo’s 34th feature is a star vehicle for Song Sunmi, appearing here in her eighth Hong film. She plays Bae Jeongsu, who has returned to acting after a hiatus sparked by a controversial marriage and divorce. We find her on Seoul’s outskirts at a German restaurant—this is thus a Hong film of beer drinking as opposed to soju or makgeolli—on a press day for her comeback, an indie film with likely a little more action than the one we’re watching. In real time, she tries to stick to the script while being tossed semi- softball questions from three journalists more interested in her private life than the film itself. Perhaps Hong’s most experimental feature to date, GEUNYEOGA DORAON NAL is the latest entry in his ongoing project of cinematically interpreting Gilles Deleuze’s theory of repetition as a creative, singular event that carries internal difference as an illustration of how identity itself is never fixed. With Hong, the pleasure is found in the difference between the parts of the narrative itself—capped by a final act twist—and by comparing the film’s familiar structures to those of the minimalist works that precede and will eventually follow it. (Mark Peranson)