RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN

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RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN

Dec 22, 2020

Writer by Pierce Conran
View1830

2015 | 121 MIN | Drama

DIRECTOR HONG Sang-soo

CAST JUNG Jae-young, KIM Min-hee

RELEASE DATE September 24, 2015

CONTACT Finecut Co., Ltd.

Tel +82 2 569 8777

Fax +82 2 569 6662

Email cineinfo@finecut.co.kr

Prolific arthouse filmmaker HONG Sang-soo entered a new phase of his career in 2015 with the release of his 17th film Right Now, Wrong Then (2015). Stylistically it bears many of the trade-marks that HONG had built up over the years, but it netted him his biggest ever prize, the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland (where it also won Best Actor for JUNG Jae-young). However, the main reason it may be remembered in the future is for being his first partnership with future muse KIM Min-hee. Their partnership has (as of this writing) yielded seven acclaimed films and both HONG and KIM have been praised for bringing out the best in each other. Of course, beyond the film set, their relationship outside of work has drawn an equal amount of scrutiny at home.

Film director Ham Chu-su (JUNG Jae-young) travels to Suwon to participate in a Q&A for his film, but the only problem is he’s come a day early and now has plenty of time to kill with nothing to do. He whiles away his time visiting a local temple, where he meets a local young artist named Hee-jung (KIM Min-hee). He invites her for coffee, drops by her studio and the pair eventually get very drunk over sushi and soju together. They continue their evening by visiting her friends, but when they ask if he’s married, he reveals that he is, which leaves Hee-jung bitterly disappointed.

In the second half of the film, the same day replays with largely the same things happenings. A few variations occur and the angles are slightly different but the most immediately noticeable change is the delivery of the dialogue, which is far more dry, sober and less flirty between the leads this time (at least initially). This time, it’s Chu-su who admits to being married before it comes up in conversation, which leads to a very different kind of feeling between them as the night wears on.

As has often been the case in his work, the main character of the film, an arthouse film director who struggles to stay faithful to his wife, is a stand-in for the director. In some ways it can be seen as a confessional (to what degree and about what we can’t be sure) but it could well be that HONG is just a filmmaker who’s far more comfortable using inspiration from things that have happened to or around him, rather than deriving new scenarios out of thin air.

The film’s most striking scene, which goes some way to helping us understand how HONG may have become entranced by KIM’s extraordinary talents, comes towards the end of the first version of the night of drinking. Hee-jung sits facing the camera, flanked by her three acquaintances and Chu-su, who all face each other. As is common in HONG’s films, the camera zooms in a little early on, does it a bit more further into the discussion when Chu-su answers that he is married, and eventually once more, as Hee-jung’s quiet devastation swallows up the screen, her drinking partner, now irrelevant, slivers on the edge of the screen. KIM barely speaks in this scene, but it’s during the long stretches of silence that she’s most effective, as she dominates the proceedings with an exceptionally complex and expressive performance.

Yet, if the first half is ‘won’ by KIM Min-hee, it’s JUNG Jae-young who steals the show in the second half with a gregarious performance of a man aware of his charm and his limitations. Feeling boxed in, he acts out emotionally (in outbursts that are rather hilarious) and struggles with his consciousness. The question is, which situation is the ‘right now’, and which the ‘wrong then’? More curious still, which of these situations is false or is it the characterization that’s a fabrication?

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