This film is a minor addition to the South Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s continuing investigation of human embarrassment.
It often seems as though the most devoted fans of the prolific South Korean director Hong Sangsoo regard him as incapable of making an inessential work. Because his films play with theme and variation, the logic goes, they are best viewed in tandem, as installments in a continually refined investigation of the clumsy, painful, droll ways that people, often booze-slicked, interact. A current series of Hong’s features at Film at Lincoln Center presents most of the titles on double bills.
But if Hong is consistent in his material and his style, down to his signature zooms, his features are uneven in quality. For every “Hotel by the River” (2019), he makes a quickie that seems to have leaped straight from inspiration to screen. With its limited settings and characters, noodled synthesizer score (composed by Hong himself) and long takes that court cringe comedy but also look like they were simply practical, “In Front of Your Face,” one of two Hong movies from last year’s New York Film Festival, falls into the minor camp.
Sangok (Lee Hyeyoung) is a former actress visiting South Korea from her home in the United States. Her sister, Jeongok (Cho Yunhee), remarks that there’s a lot they don’t know about each other anymore. Sangok has a meeting with Jaewon (Kwon Haehyo), a Hong-like filmmaker — she compares his movies to short stories — who wants to cast her.
A stain on an outfit from an impulsive meal, a changed meeting spot and the absence of food at the new location pose obstacles before Sangok confides in Jaewon, in a revelation that contains the film’s point. The secret is poised somewhere between triteness and disarming simplicity.
In Front of Your Face
Not rated. In Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
