The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sangsoo, 2020) (Patreon)

Hong operates in a minor key here, with the compositional interest primarily hinging on all the things he doesn't do. The Woman Who Ran doesn't scramble chronology, nor does it involve awkward, blubbering confessions around a soju-saturated restaurant table. But most importantly, this film doesn't center on male-female relationships. Men do pop up now and then, and the absent husband of main character Gamhee (Kim Min-hee) does seem to hover around the film like a nagging idea that can't be dispelled. But for the most part, this is a film about interactions among women. Terse, economical, and pointedly devoid of drama, this is almost like Hong's answer to Hamaguchi's sprawling Happy Hour.

The Woman Who Ran opens with a close-up on chickens, but they don't belong to Gamhee's friend Youngsoon (Seo Young-hwa). Rather, they live right up the hill, and the crowing of the "mean rooster" annoys her and her housemate Youngjin (Lee Eun-mi). This irritation parallels the pair's insistence on feeding stray cats, much to the chagrin of their new neighbor (Shin Seok-ho), who calls them "robber cats" and argues that their presence is preventing his cat-phobic wife from coming outside. We never meet the wife, the owners of the chickens, and we barely meet this irate neighbor. But with this careful setup, Hong establishes the stakes of The Woman Who Ran, slight though they may be. Life is a series of petty annoyances and mini-squabbles, and Korean women in particular have to negotiate the world with subtle passive-aggression.

So, when Gamhee meets up with her friend Suyoung (Song Seon-mi), she fails to recognize the extent to which her enthusing about her happy marriage can be seen as a form of oneupmanship, prodding at Suyoung's feelings of loneliness and failure. Hong emphasizes this awkwardness throughout the film with writing and line deliveries that border on the robotic, as if characters are working overtime to convince themselves of what they are saying. Suyoung's mention of a bar filled with "creative types," for example, ends with her saying, "I think I want to become a regular!" For her part, Gamhee questions whether Suyoung belongs at an artists' bar, forcing her friend to remind her that she has done dance performances now and again.

It is only in the final interaction, an unexpected encounter with Woojin (Kim Sae-byuk), that Gamhee is pressed to push past the stilted niceties and address some actual tension. Woojin gives Gamhee a very direct, sincere apology, which Gamhee quickly tries to brush past. It gradually becomes clear that Woojin's husband or partner is someone she somehow stole from Gamhee, and at this point Hong is taking his scenario to the outside limit of stiff civility. As you might expect, it is cinema, in the form of a middle-aged film director, that serves as the point of contention.

The Woman Who Ran is disconcertingly limpid. With its largely uninflected organization and delivery, the film feels simple, not to say simplistic. But it does strike me as a transitional film, a sign that Hong may be moving into a new conceptual realm where men are going to be less conspicuous as overt subjects, and more or less present based on the damage they've done. This could, paradoxically, be a way to let guys off the hook. But we shall see.