OKI’S MOVIE

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OKI’S MOVIE

Sep 08, 2020

Writer by Pierce Conran
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2010 | 80 MIN | Drama, Romance

DIRECTOR HONG Sang-soo

CAST LEE Sun-kyun, JUNG Yu-mi, MOON Sung-keun

RELEASE DATE September 16, 2010

CONTACT Finecut

Tel +82 2 569 8777

Fax +82 2 569 6662

Email cineinfo@finecut.co.kr

HONG Sang-soo’s 11th film, Oki’s Movie (2010) explores many of the director’s favorite themes and narrative quirks, yet something about this brief 80-minute film has particularly marked his fans, many of whom rank it among his best. The film is split into four chapters, which focus on the same three characters, but each with a slightly different perspective and at different times. The most memorable of these chapters is the last, an extended parallel sequence that revels in the little details that separate two similar experiences.

In ‘A Day for Incantation’, filmmaker Jingu (LEE Sun-kyun) goes to a work dinner where he gets into an argument with Professor Song (MOON Sung-keun), who used to be his professor. Jingu then goes to a Q&A for his short film, where a member of the audience confronts him about an affair he had. ‘King of Kisses’ finds Jingu some years earlier as a student. He likes Oki (JUNG Yu-mi), who has just ended a secret relationship with Professor SONG. ‘After the Snowstorm’ gathers these three characters along in a classroom, as other students skipped class because of the weather, where they discuss relationships. In final chapter ‘Oki’s Movie’, Oki discusses her relationship with a younger and an older man, and their walks up Acha Mountain in Central Seoul.

Oki’s Movie (2010) debuted in the Orizzonti section of the Venice International Film Festival in 2010, which was the first year when HONG released two films, with Hahaha (2010) picking up the Un Certain Regard Award at the Cannes Film Festival a few months earlier. The film is humorous, though less overtly so than Hahaha (2010), but perhaps more contemplative than his usual films.

After introducing all the typical “Hongian” traits and characters - film professors and directors, hidden romances, and angry drinking sessions - the film brings everything together in the ‘Oki’s Movie’ chapter, which lends the film its title. The chapter is a short film made by Oki, also a film student, in which she recounts through narration her experiences in the same place at different times with the two different male leads. It cuts back and forth between them, comparing each moment as they walk past the same locations, down to who went to the bathroom and when.

Director HONG has long been fascinated with the little variations that differentiate the similarities or coincidences peppered throughout our daily lives, and Oki’s Movie (2010) finds him at his most inquisitive on his favorite subject. As Oki explains in her narration: “Things repeat themselves with differences I don’t understand.”

The film once again assembles a cast of familiar HONG faces, including LEE Sun-kyun and MOON Sung-keun, but JUNG Yu-mi is the kernel at the heart of it all. JUNG had appeared in supporting role in HONG’s Like You Know It All (2009) a year earlier, but this was her first of two lead roles for the director (Our Sunhi would follow in 2013), at a time when she was starting to become known in the commercial film arena through films like Chaw (2009) and My Dear Desperado (2010), but just ahead of her breakout the following year in Silenced (2011).

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