Hong Sang-soo, prolific as ever, presents at this year's NYFF again with two films. And I can't keep up with him! For Hong, with his small camcorder with minimal crew, sketching out one slight narrative after another. It seems filmmaking has become as natural to him as breathing or drinking Soju. More and more I watch his films, he seems to draw his inspirations from anywhere, however trivial and small they might be to others.
The Day She Returns, Hong's 34th feature, is about an actress coming out of a long hiatus and giving interviews to various journalists throughout the day, doing a press junket. It is a common practice to promote a film that filmmakers and actors perform, during a film festival or prior to film's release to the general public, which film writers like me are familiar with. A press junket maintains its own small ecosystem populated by filmmakers, their handlers, journalists and PR company folks, where we encounter same faces, same questions and answers over and over again.
Song Seon-mi (Hong's frequent collaborator, recently seen in Hong's Walk Up (2022)), plays Jeong-su, an actress making a comeback after a divorce, starring in a small indie movie by a young rising filmmaker. It's a press day and she is giving three interviews back to back, taking a smoke break in between, in a small German restaurant by the window.
As each interview by young adoring journalists progresses, Jeong-su reveals not only her acting career and the project, but also about her personal life. But her divorce is still a touchy subject. The short interviews in these press junkets are in themselves a delicate ritual - there's an awkward introduction and nervousness, once the niceties are settled, you get to talk about the project and other things, then invariably concludes with the 'advice for the younger generation' question.
If we learned anything from Hong Sang-soo Multiverse- a career spanning retrospective series, a few years back, is his penchant for exploring the double, triple, multi-takes of the same situations. In The Day She Returns, Hong uses the press junket to emphasize these multi-takes, that there are infinite, variable takes and angles of one object, situation, place or person in life.
Jeong-su is personable and very open to all interviewers and dying for a beer (the restaurant is known for its draft beer). She approaches the subject of ordering beer to all interviewers and all of them first politely declines. But she finds success with the second interviewer, a young woman who doesn't quite understand what the film means. Doesn't matter, there's a tall glass of cold beer in front of her. The drinking loosens Jeong-su up and she talks about her divorce and her ex, somewhat bitterly, which she regrets later and asks the interviewer not to publish the part about her divorce talk, in order to respect the privacy and reputation of her ex-husband.
During Jeong-su's three interviews, with similar yet slightly varied questions and answers, Hong delights us with the humorous formulaic nature of press interviews (oh we journalists think our questions are so clever and unique!), delicate human interactions (one more personable than the other), giving a bullshit generic wisdom of the elders that they themselves don't believe in - when asked about giving an advice to the younger generation, she gives the same answers to all young interviewers, "Love yourself first!" and the folly of believing that a short interview can reveal the truth about the subject.
During the third interview, Jeong-su reveals that she is still taking acting lessons from a renowned acting coach with a unique technique. After the interview, she hurries off to her acting lesson. Her acting coach (Oh Yeon-su) wants her to reenact the interviews she did with the help of an assistant Junhee (Park Mi-so, another Hong regular), playing the generic version of three interviewers. So we are watching yet another take of the same situations with varying degrees. Only this time, Jeong-su doesn't remember any details of what she talked about in those interviews.
The Day She Returns is yet another delightful, humorous and delicate slice of life film from Hong, one of the most unique filmmakers working today. May his multiverse continue in perpetuity.
The Day She Returns plays on 10/6 and 10/8 at NYFF.
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