DVD OF THE WEEK: Night and Day
by Vadim Rizov 
Hong Sang-soo's films riff off of and build upon each other, which makes it unfortunate that 2008's
Night and Day is one of only four Hong films to see an American DVD release. A key shift took place in 2005's
A Tale of Cinema, which
introduced voiceover and zoom lenses to his work, elements which he's wielded with increasing aggression since. Before 2005, it's safe to generalize that his films dealt in semi-tragic depictions of men callously taking sexual advantage of women without much agency or say in the matter. 2006's
Woman on the Beach ends with said female pushing her stalled car over the sand (a physical, non-precious metaphor for Doing It Herself), and subsequent films have been bolder at both reusing the same basic plot ingredients?a confused film director, a love triangle/quadrangle, no real resolution, overlapping cast members?and giving women the final say. The tone's veered closer to overt comedy in recent years, and
Night and Day's meandering 146 minutes are shaggy-dog humor, defusing potentially painful situations and playing them for counter-intuitively genial laughs.
Having fled South Korea to avoid prosecution for smoking marijuana, painter Kim Sung-nam (Kim Yeong-ho) arrives in Paris. Time is marked with the kind of detailed titled cards normally reserved for military advances and Tony Scott movies: on August 7, Kim lands at the airport and gets told by a sinister stranger (for no apparent reason!) to be careful. August 9, he ventures into the backyard to smoke and vows in voiceover to make a fresh start. The next day Kim goes out through the front door this time, notes the air is exceptionally clear and non-humid for a city, then goes right back inside. August 11, he finally ventures outside his boarding house's confines (to get more cigarettes), finally plunging himself back into the usual Hong vortex of sexual confusion and dishonestly articulated impulses.
Idle hands are famously the devil's workshop: with his extremities unoccupied with art, Kim tries arm-wrestling, elaborate hand-shakes (doing a half-assed bro-pound with his boarding house's proprietor), awkwardly fondling the three women he gets involved with, and?most ill-advisedly?quoting the Bible at ex-girlfriend Min-sun (Kim Yu-Jin). "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off" (Matthew 5:30), he intones?this after bringing her to a hotel room, 10 years after the end of their relationship, a few years after his marriage, and mere days after learning she had six abortions without telling him while they were a couple.
Kim's voiceover is sincerely stupid?a major shift after the actions of men in films like 2004's
Woman is the Future of Man, whose dueling
frenemies both hook up with the same young lady in 24 hours; she hopes one is sincere, but they're both borderline evil in their insensitivity. Kim's actions are unintentionally negative rather than cynical: "We dated ten years ago but she seems to be angry with me," he notes of Min-sun, his confusion bizarrely unempathetic considering he couldn't even recognize her on the street. Nonetheless, he's aware that there's something wrong with his behavior, at one point breaking down into tears: "I've looked down on people," he weeps, before vowing to see only the good in people. It doesn't last.
Kim Yeong-ho is built like a linebacker; this is his first appearance in a Hong film, but he returned in 2010's
Hahaha as Admiral Yi, a 16th-century Korean hero of naval warfare. This is the kind of intricate casting and character-tweaking Hong's restaging of similar situations allow for, and why it's a shame his work isn't more easily accessible: in
Night and Day, Kim's character declares (for no explained reason) in a conversation with a fellow painter that van Gogh was a "good person," which leads to a debate over whether or not purposeful simplifications and distortions of historical people are merely dumb or can actually serve a useful purpose in the present. In
Hahaha, a similar debate about whether or not Admiral Yi's heroism has been overstated leads to a tour guide's tearful declaration that no contemporary man could possibly live as well and kindly as Yi. Kim subsequently shows in dream form as the Admiral himself, to berate
Hahaha's typically flawed male protagonist and urge him to see only the good in others?an impossible project his own character attempted in
Night and Day.
There used to be a grim, blackly comic vibe to Hong's work, but this is one of his most amiable films, the story of a bumbler rather than of a straight-up heartless monster. One of the running gags is how?despite being set in Paris?hardly any French people are seen; instead, Korean students and �migr�s cluster together in closed social circles, recreating their usual pathologies without any regard for their setting. There are women on the beach here too: no matter where Hong's characters are, they're always drawn to the same conditions. The title refers to Paris' long summer nights: we have trouble telling night from day, the boardhouse proprietor tells Kim. It's a simple analogy for the puzzlement Kim has for telling dream sequence from reality and his true impulses from his would-be moral moments, but he's not treated unkindly:
Night and Day is lucid about his genuine confusion, a sharp story about a mixed-up man.
Posted by ahillis at January 10, 2012 12:10 PM
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