Rightly named one of 2020’s best films, The Woman Who Ran finds the delightfully prolific Hong Sang-soo at his most bare and gentle. Kim Min-hee’s luminous presence fills the screen in this disarming minimalist gem, where wisdom emanates from small talk and men don’t seem to fit in a feminine world.
If Hong Sang-soo’s first two features were unconventional, it was with his third that he fully embraced the possibilities of narrative playfulness. Through a dazzling ouroboros of repetitions and variations, Hong picks at the very notion of truth in the entangled mess of human relationships.
Hong Sang-soo’s second feature, this time working from his own script, sees a leap towards a signature style. No zooms just yet—but plenty of soju—in a film of playful repetitions and savvy symmetries, whose long takes and structural innovations underpin twin perspectives on a single set of events.
