Woman on the Beach

Hong Sangsoo
2006
127 minutes

Description

Filmmaker Joong-rae, suffering from writer’s block, takes a trip to the coast with his production designer Chang-wook, who brings along the vivacious Moon-sook. Soon after their arrival, Moon-sook falls for Joong-rae’s advances; however, the fickle hero can’t commit and he awkwardly parts with her. What had been a sardonic Jules and Jim turns into a burlesque Vertigo when Joong-rae returns to the coastal resort and attempts to recreate the original romance with a woman who resembles Moon-sook, until his jilted lover shows up… A new 4K restoration completed by the Korean Film Archive from the original 35mm negative.

Reviews

“Wry and tender and delicately melancholic… shows a newly confident filmmaker again working near the top of his form… This seemingly casual triangle is a classic formal and sexual configuration for Hong, whose elegant, restrained films chart the mysteries of the heart and the follies of the head with intelligence and shock waves of feeling.”
— Manohla Dargis, The New York Times