Right Now, Wrong Then
Description
A middle-aged artist, a young ingénue, existential crises, romantic fumblings and confessional drinkathons—like Monet and his water lilies, Hong Sang-soo keeps returning to the same basic material and refining his pitch-perfect preoccupations of what fools lovelorn men are. And as with several of the South Korean filmmaker’s recent works, his latest character study revolves around a single situation being reprised with very different results. Famous director Ham (Jung Jae-young), travels from Seoul to present one of his movies at a festival. Desperate to kill time, he visits a local Buddhist monastery and meets Hee-jung (Kim Min-hee), a beautiful painter who’s never heard of him. They spend the rest of the afternoon talking about life,and art; once the drinks switch from tea to copious beers with Hee-jung’s friends, however, secrets are spilled and love connections cut short. Then, out of nowhere, the reset button is pushed and Right Now, Wrong Then is right back at the beginning—but with subtle differences—in a film that confirms that the creator of this moral tale remains a thoroughly contemporary heir to French New Wave director Eric Rohmer’s offbeat romantic cinema. —David Fear
Ever since making his feature-film debut in 1996 with The Day the Pig Fell into the Well, Hong Sang-soo has remained one of the most prolific and vital South Korean filmmakers working today. A graduate of both Cal Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago, the Seoul-born director has collected awards at film festivals in Pusan, Cannes, Rotterdam and beyond. Right Now, Wrong Then is his 17th film and the recent winner of the Golden Leopard at Locarno.
Film Details
Language Korean
Year 2015
Runtime 121
Country South Korea
Director Hong Sang-soo
Producer Kim Kyoung-hee
Writer Hong Sang-soo
Editor Hahm Sung-won
Cinematographer Park Hong-yeol
Music Jeong Yong-jin
Cast Jung Jae-young, Kim Min-hee