The Novelist's Film (Hong Sangsoo, 2022) (Patreon)

Once again giving the lie to the common claim that all Hong films are the same, The Novelist's Film pointedly demonstrates the formal limitations of his method. Although Hong's latest rallies in the end, proving to be somewhat more complex than its banal first-half would suggest, The Novelist's Film is one of the few recent Hong films that feels like a dramatic exercise rather than a full-fledged piece of cinema. For quite some time now, Hong has refrained from fully scripting his films, preferring to work from an outline, producing dialogue on-set and sometimes permitting his actors to improvise. This is a risky modus operandi, and as one might expect, sometimes the mojo isn't flowing like it should. But filmmakers who work in this manner -- Cassavetes, Mike Leigh, Apichatpong to some extent -- are typically willing to accept failure as part of the bargain.

In The Novelist's Film, we follow Junhee (Lee Hyeyoung, star of In Front of Your Face), a successful middle-aged writer who is somewhat adrift, having hit a fallow moment in her career. Is it writer's block, or is she completely tapped out? She pays a visit to a local independent bookstore run by an old friend, Sewon (Seo Younghwa). Their conversation shows the difficulty of two friends reconnecting following estrangement, but it also displays the less felicitous results of typical "yes, and" improv. There is potential in the direction their conversation eventually takes, since Sewon appears to have left literary pretense behind. "Now I only read what I like," she remarks. But like many of the compelling ideas in The Novelist's Film, it withers on the vine.

We follow Junhee as she goes sightseeing. While gazing from the observation deck of a local tower, she meets the wife (Gi Jubong) of a filmmaker she knows. Interestingly, the woman keeps claiming to be someone "who lives with" the man she is actually married to. Eventually she calls over Hyojin (Kwon Haehyo), the filmmaker. Junhee accuses him of hiding from her, and we learn that he was supposed to adapt one of her novels for the screen, but couldn't pull it together. "It wasn't my fault," he remarks. "It was the investors' decision. The investor is top dog," a turn of phrase Junhee mocks. However she saves her full ire for Hyojin for later, when they meet up with Gilsoo (Kim Minhee), a popular actress who has scaled back her ambitions, now working only intermittently. "Such a waste," Hyojin remarks, prompting to Junhee to upbraid him. "She's not in kindergarten. 'Waste' implies she's doing something wrong."

As Junhee meanders through town, eventually circling back to the bookstore where the film began, The Novelist's Film underlines the smothering insularity of South Korean arts culture. Everybody knows everybody else, even though you might not know it. This could partly explain Hong's own practice here. He has a stable of reliable actors, and they are up for anything he proposes, no matter how slight. But when the proceedings bog down -- an endless exchange about "charisma" is a particular low-light -- it clarifies the actual precariousness of Hong's method. If he were really making the same film over and over again, that "film" would simply become better and better through repetition. But in fact, social discomfort is the real engine of Hong's art.  Despite The Novelist's Film setting the soju aside (in favor of makkgeoli, an off-white, semi-viscous fermented spirit), there's no guarantee that every situation will generate productively awkward interaction. And for the most part, Hong is not content to let the silence hang.