THE DAY HE ARRIVES

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THE DAY HE ARRIVES

Oct 07, 2019

Writer by Pierce Conran
View1681

2011 | 79 MIN | Drama

DIRECTOR Hong Sangsoo

CAST YU Jun-sang, KIM Sang-joong, SONG Sun-mi, KIM Bo-kyung, KIM Eui-sung

RELEASE DATE September 8, 2011

CONTACT Finecut

TEL +82 2 569 8777

FAX +82 2 569 6662

EMAIL cineinfo@finecut.co.kr

In the spring of 2011, Director Hong Sangsoo was invited to the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival for what was until then one of the most playful entries in his filmography. For his 12th film, Hong returned to black and white photography, something he hadn’t done since his third feature Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (2000), though he’s gone on to shoot three more monochrome titles in recent years - in fact, his three most recent, The Day After (2017), Grass (2018) and Hotel by the River (2019).

YU Jun-sang plays Seong-joon, a film director on an extended break between projects, who decides to take a trip to Seoul one winter, where he reconnects with old friends and colleagues, not to mention old flames. He visits the Bukchon neighborhood in the heart of old Seoul, where he is scheduled to meet his friend, but when the latter doesn’t show up, he ambles around town, bumping into people and making new acquaintances over drinks. During his stay he eventually does meet his friend, and the pair visit a special bar, whose piano-playing hostess bears a striking resemblance to Seong-joon’s ex.

Set in Hong’s beloved Bukchon, a neighborhood nestled between the two main palace sites of Seoul which is filled with winding alleys, traditional eateries and watering holes that stay open through till the early hours of the morning, The Day He Arrives arrived at a time in the director’s career when the humor of his style was becoming more pronounced. That said, the heavier philosophical themes he’s always hinted at, and which made him a darling of the international arthouse circuit, very much remain a seamlessly interwoven part of the package.

The humor evident in The Day He Arrives, along with the seemingly meandering style of the narrative, belie a drum-tight narrative structure that is filled with seemingly coincidental repetitions which invite the viewer to seeks answers in every corner of the film. Indeed, beyond those evident within this narrative, the repetitions carry over throughout Hong’s body of work, with YU Jun-sang, one of the Hong’s most frequent collaborators, incarnating yet another indie film director who shares several traits with Hong himself.

As we face the prospect of a year without a new Hong film, the first time this has happened since 2007, it is perhaps an ideal time to revisit some of the many highlights of Hong’s extensive filmography, and the delightfully playful, starkly beautiful and surprisingly insightful The Day He Arrives is a great place to start.

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