One thought came to my mind several days after I watched Hong Sang-soo's new movie "The Day He Arrives". I am a lot different from his characters, but, has been my daily life on weekdays monotonously repeated with little variations noticeable enough to help distinguish Monday from Friday, like 4 days and 4 nights depicted in the film? I get up in the morning, I go to my lab, and then, after work and some exercise, I return to my dormitory at late night for movies and sleep. It sounds boring, but small things sometimes happen in my mundane daily life, and, whether they are good or bad, I am not bored much thanks to them.And I was also not bored while watching "The Day He Arrives". Like his previous films, Hong Sang-soo tells his story in his minimalistic style with his familiar stock characters. Their names are different, and the actors playing them are different, they are the same kind of men and women we have met from his other 11 works in the past. Again, they are associated with the filmmaking, and they spend their time with drinking and talking.Seong-jun, played Yoo Joon-Sang, is a movie director who comes to Seoul for meeting his mentor/friend Sang-joong(Kim Yeong-ho), who works as a movie critic. It is not clear about what he is doing now, but it looks like Seong-jun is teaching movie in some university instead of making movie. While his movies were not particularly successful considering the conversations between him and others, the people he comes across know him and some of them say they like his movies.Day 1 begins with Seong-jun trying to reach Sang-joong's cell phone in the afternoon. He does not answer. Seong-jun does not know what to do while walking around the streets and alleys of Seoul. He encounters an actress he met before and they have a brief conversation. After that, he goes to the bar and drinks some rice wine. Coincidentally, there are the film students who recognize him, and Seong-jun soon joins in their drinking party.Late at night, in inebriated state, Seong-jun suddenly runs away from his bewildered juniors. He goes to the apartment where his former girlfriend lives. She does not welcome him much, but soon they have a talk with beer at her small place, and Seong-jun, still drunk, keeps telling her he is sorry with pathetic self-pity. It sounds embarrassing, but it is funnier than you think, and the audiences around me frequently giggled while watching how they eventually share the bed at that night and…In the next morning, they behave as if nothing serious had happened during last night. Day 2 begins, and Seong-jun is wondering around the same area. He meets the same actress and has some conversation with her again. In this time, he meets Sang-joong, and they go to the bar named "Novel" together with the film school professor Bo-ram(Song Seon-mi). They have a long, jolly conversation while drinking. Seong-jun even plays a piano for them, though he is not so good as Sang-joon says.When the owner of "Novel" appears in front of them, Seung-jun looks a little confounded by her appearance. She is played by Kim Bo-gyeong, who also plays Seung-jun's girlfriend. Are they the same person? No way, because there is a scene where one is with Seung-jun while the other talks to him through his cell phone. Are they related? Not so possible in my opinion.When Day 3 begins for Seung-jun, we start to see that Hong Sang-soo is having a fun with the repeated situation for his characters; again, the drinking begins with another character joining the group. After having some conversation at the campus with warm cups of coffee in their hands, Seung-jun and Sang-joong meet Joong-won(Kim Ee-seong), a former actor who has recently come back from Vietnam where he did some business. Their drinking begins in the early afternoon, and, again, they go to the same bar with Bo-ram. And, yes, we are not surprised to watch Seung-jun play the same piece with the same piano.Are they conscious of their days and nights of alcohol being continuously repeated to some degree? I don't know, but I was amused by the actors' droll, naturalistic performances. Hong Sang-soo repeats almost the same dialogues at the same places with the same compositions. The characters talk like they have never uttered the same words before. Lots of alcohol must have influenced their memory banks, I guess.As a guy who knows several things about the drinking in South Korea, I was amused enough to like this pleasant movie. When you drink, you may embarrass yourself while talking a lot. You probably try to take care of your problem, but, with your brain influenced by alcohol, you just make yourself more embarrassing. In the end, the new day will begin for you – and there is always new night for drinking.

OK, so I get that this is a foreign film, and I get that I'm supposed to be super-sensitive to cultural differences. But, and a huge BUT here, I was bored beyond tears with this one.I'm regretfully placed in an awkward position to witness the characters stutter their way through their seemingly contrived scripts, from the tedious profile angles that the director seems to prefer. I was witness to over the top and quite frankly, ridiculous responses to otherwise benign dialogue contrivances.I really, really tried to give this flick a chance, but I just couldn't get into it. I'm no stranger to foreign films, and watch and enjoy a number of them. This one, however, bored the living fecal matter out of me.

This genuinely weird Korean film seemed like a fusion of "Groundhog Day" and "No Exit" but in a style that married Eric Rohmer and Woody Allen. I don't really know if I liked it or not and kind of admire it for that. A Korean film-maker, who has forsaken the art world for a simple life as a rural school-teacher, returns to Seoul to reunite with friends. The first night is an enthralling experience of great, drunken conversation on the nature of chance and identity, with much drunken lust thrown in. Each following day becomes a less satisfying copy of the first. Time has stopped, and only the director seems (semi) conscious of it. I would interpret this work as a kind of confession. The director's development has been entrapped by his vanity even as he strives for a life of modesty. Whatever else, it captures Seoul, and drunken satisfaction- be it intellectual or amorous- very nicely.

The Day He Arrives is a very interesting look at relationships and the emotional barriers that are put up by both men and women. I'm a big fan of directors who use long takes in scenes and it's really strange here because almost every scene is done in one take even though there's a barrel load of dialogue in each of them – it must have been very hard for the actors but that just brings out the superb performances from each of the cast. Throughout the film we see the same sets and the same supporting characters over and over again – some not related to the plot at all – but unlike most filmmakers the repetition is explained through dialogue and story which makes this quite unique. It's also interesting to take note of the voice over which chimes in every time the main character receives a text message, further delving into the main character's mind – something which you don't normally see in any film with any of it's characters. Another great technique used by the director is the zooms – they happen halfway through takes and they never really focus on anything except the characters, we rarely get a shot of one character on their own and I don't think there's a single close up in the film. Regardless of that we still feel the characters' emotions as we would in any other film and in that respect the director is doing something very special with these techniques. I look forward to seeing more of the directors work. http://destroyallcinema.wordpress.com/