Introduction (Hong Sangsoo, 2021) (Patreon)

Hong Sangsoo's two films from 2021 form an instructive if frustrating diptych. Where his most recent effort, In Front of Your Face, reduces some of the director's thematic moves to their bare essence, Introduction is a strange exercise in form, one that quite literally amounts to less than the sum of its parts. There are three parts, to be exact, and each vignette orbits to some extent around one character, Youngho (Shin Seokho), a young man seemingly at a number of crossroads in life. 

A viewer might reasonably expect Hong to show us a series of interrelated moments of decision, or provide interpretive portraits of Youngho from various points of view. And while Introduction does not really do this, one could not say definitively that it doesn't. Hong has made a film that wants to suggest broad temporal ellipses (I think), but what he's actually produced is a bit more like a set of sketches using the same characters but without any clear causality. It's easy to envision Hong plotting out Introduction on a bunch of Post-It notes, and a strong gust of wind blowing 75% of them away. 

This isn't a formal principle so much as an aggressive promulgation of lack. In the first part, we see Youngho waiting to meet his father (Kim Youngho), a successful acupuncturist. In the opening scene, the doctor is praying at his desk, asking God for one more chance. We never discover what's troubling him, since he keeps his son waiting so he can reconnect with an old friend (Ki Joobong), a renowned actor. In part two, we learn that Youngho has taken off for Germany, aiming to follow his girlfriend Juwon (Park Miso), who has gone there to study fashion. This episode ends with Youngho resolving to find something he can study in Germany, so he can stay with Juwon.

After some time has presumably passed, Youngho is back in Korea. He is meeting his grim, disapproving mother (Cho Yoonhee) for drinks, because she wants him to speak with the actor from the first segment. It appears that Youngho took up acting, but has suddenly quit, much to his mother's chagrin. Showing up to the restaurant with his (uninvited) friend Jeongsoo (Ha Seongguk) in tow, Youngho explains that he has moral qualms about acting, an assertion that infuriates the older actor beyond all reason. The two friends wisely flee the scene.

There is an implication that a love scene in a student film upset Juwon, creating a conflict in her relationship with Youngho. The fact that he's back from Germany could suggest that the two broke up. But after Jeongsoo goes swimming in the ocean, Youngho towels him off and helps him get dressed with a tenderness one seldom sees in Hong's films. Are the two men more than friends, and is this the real reason the earlier relationship failed?

With each new segment, and even sometimes within the segments, Introduction feels as though Hong is continually hitting the reset button. Offhanded remarks by the characters tell us that this onscreen world is aware of the pandemic, and we must wonder whether the shooting schedule and even the lack of clear connective tissue are results of Covid disruptions. But we must take Introduction as it is. In its halting narrative progression and the subsequent shifts in character, Introduction could be as close as this filmmaker has ever come to emulating the style of Maurice Pialat. But where Pialat employed time gaps to create carefully constructed contradictions, here Hong seems content to play a game of hide-and-seek with the viewer. As an exercise, Introduction is never less than admirable, but it's not all that much more, either.

Addendum: after winning the Best Screenplay award at the 2021 Berlinale, Hong send the festival a two-minute thank you film that consists of the director reading a note of appreciation (in English), followed by his "gift" to the audience -- a shot of a beautiful snail he and Kim Minhee found while walking on the shore. As we watch the snail inch along the rocks, we hear Kim off-camera singing "Que Sera Sera." It's a lovely doodle, and perhaps a living metaphor for Hong's dogged cinematic persistence.