Like You Know It All is the last Hong Sang-soo film I have on DVD and during the credits, I felt an unusual degree of sadness. My journey with Hong has been thus far exciting, painful, humourous, excruciatingly painful, very humourous and exciting. I respect Hong greatly for his ability to unveil the sad truth about human nature in a very naturalistic fashion, and I have indeed learned much about human beings from his film. I am indebted to Hong for the sociological enlightenment he has provided through his work.

Like You Know It All is both very like and unlike Hong’s other work. Awkward drinking, pathetic characters, characters involved in cinema, long takes cement this film’s status as a Hong Sang-soo film. But yet again, his use of panning, zooms, voiceover and non-diegetic music here is a new direction and rather challenging for Hong cultists. What does this mean about Hong’s style? Personally, I do not really care. He has already perfected his cinema and it is obviously effective. Right now, I am more enamoured of Hong’s ability to use his trademark elements to provide us with a new story everytime is amazing and fascinating. His writing alone makes his films great cinema, although his style is undoubtedly worthy too.

What Like You Know It All presents is a self-critical examination of the hypocrisy of artists, and of everyone actually. It is probably one of Hong’s most accessible works as it does not feature the Antonioni-levels of alienation that his first six films do and the camera actually moves! I am inclined to catergorise Like You Know It All as a lighter comedic work, but once again, this does not work as Hong’s films are genuinely painful to watch and half of the laughs come from awkwardness.

But in any case, the film is another fantastic naturalistic examination of human nature. It is as though we can only understand ourselves when we objectively watch strangers much like ourselves interacting on film. I am never going to arm wrestle again.