While effectively every Hong Sangsoo film nabs nice responses from those who seek it out, By the Stream has carried a tad more weight––the sense that, after a few years of particularly handmade experiments, his longest feature (still just 111 minutes) recalled the work that first enraptured so many of us. (That he now takes an extra day in his dialogue-writing might comprise the difference.) Whatever the case, another shift is encouraging. Why should Hong, whose mystique has still never dissipated, remain ever-static? Thus we’re pleased to exclusively debut a trailer for the film, which (drumroll) Cinema Guild will release on August 8 at Film at Lincoln Center. From this it’s already evident that By the Stream‘s images are a bit grander and, dare I say, opulent.
As Rory O’Connor said in his review from Locarno, “By the Stream’s departures, and relatedly its virtues, are a bit more pronounced. Its running time almost grazes two hours––more typical in the pre-2010 era when he was shooting on film and corralling larger production resources––and the human observations avoid a glancing vignette form; true to the title, it’s a long soak in a certain kind of soulful, middle-class malaise, not far removed from John Cassavetes’ more restrained films.”
Find preview and synopsis below;
In the wake of a scandal involving several of her students, Jeonim (Kim Minhee), an artist and lecturer at a women’s university, asks her uncle Chu Sieon (Kwon Haehyo) to step in and direct a short play for the skit festival put on by her department. Her uncle is an actor-director, recently blacklisted after a scandal of his own. He decides to direct the short play because of a similar experience directing a play at the same university 40 years earlier. It doesn’t take long before Sieon develops feelings for Jeonim’s colleague, Professor Jeong (Cho Yunhee), a textile professor. Meanwhile, the circumstances surrounding the scandal grow more complicated, the moon waxes in the sky each night, and every morning Jeonim goes to the stream and sketches to grasp its patterns. For his 32nd feature film, Hong Sangsoo returns to the campus setting of films like Oki’s Movie (2010) and Our Sunhi (2013) and revisits thematic concerns and modes of expression he hasn’t touched on in his cinema for some time.