Another Berlinale, another Hong. The 2022 Silver Grand Jury Prize winning film The Novelist’s Film is our favorite film of the 2022 Berlinale. Hong’s most passionate and tender film yet.
With another Berlinale in the books, Hong Sangsoo enters the competition for the sixth time (seven at the Berlinale [Grass was in Forum]) with his major and Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize winning, The Novelist’s Film (So-seol-ga-ui yeong-hwa). In his newest film, Hong uses another usual actor of his, but a newer one, Lee Hye-young (In Front of Your Faces), who might be on a whole other level of Hong actors in terms of acting out his dialogue and her charisma. Lee Hye-young plays Kim Junhee, a renowned novelist who visits a bookstore in a new town she is visiting. She came to visit her old classmate, where talks of life and literature take place. In Hongian fashion, his usual catch-up between two old friends and letting the drama unfold is a staple in his films. The two eventually turn into three, bringing in a young bookstore employee, who shows a sign language phrase at Junhee’s request, and the two repeat the phrase altogether until its time for Junhee to go to a famous tower for sightseeing. As Hong’s conceit are simple and “predictable”, his structural and inventiveness for storytelling makes Hong’s work feel never-ending, but renewed.
When Junhee arrives, she encounters two other acquaintances, a director and his wife who have almost worked with Junhee in the past. Sly dialogue shows the relationships between each other. The wife constantly saying we “live” with each other opposed to saying married for almost 30 years is one of the outlandish, almost surreal dialogue that Hong equips. The two discuss their past as well, and when one hands Junhee a binocular, a new Hong zoom emerges like no other! Zooming back to the ground from above, we see a future co-star to appear, Kim Min-hee. This application that Hong uses was one of the simpler, yet transfixing moments because of the rhythm of dialogue, and as we see what Junhee sees, a sudden shift occurs where it isn’t a static shot from above, but a dynamic one. Once they are finished talking, they see Kim Gil-soo, played Kim Min-hee, who is an actress known by most in the town. As the four introduce themselves, the director makes a passing comment on how Gil-soo shouldn’t waste her talent not working on commercial movies. And that is when Junhee jumps in commands the screen to argue back at the director. It’s these moments where Junhee’s acting and physical nature stands up to everyone else on screen.
Junhee and Gil-soo go together off and enjoy a meal (yet another Hong tradition) and Gil-soo is interrupted by a phone call to meet with a friend of hers who is with a poet. Gil-soo thinks about it and decides to invite Junhee because of her nice hang and contagious charisma. Before arriving at the destination, they are encountered by a young filmmaker friend as well. Junhee, in the moment, proposes to Gil-soo to star in a short film that she’ll direct and let the filmmaker friend shoot and edit it. And in circular fashion, the friend Gil-soo meets up with is the same friend from the bookstore. And yet again, in Hong fashion, the staple drinking scene. Where the daily discussions on hometown life, relationships, all whilst being drunk plays out exquisitely.
With Hong films, the dialogue is what drives the film. Less interested in being a spectacle, the actors and script is where Hong flourishes. To make a film about a writer transitioning to making a film could be autobiographical such as most Hong films, but the strongest point Hong makes in The Novelist’s Film is the passion and playful art is. As the short film is shown on and off screen with Gil-soo present before, during, and after, Hong’s tenderness is at it’s all time high, presenting his most loving and charismatic film yet.
