On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong Sang-soo, 2017)

On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong Sang-soo, 2017)

Cast: Kim Min-hee, Seo Young-hwa, Jeong Jae-yeong, Mun Seong-kun, Kwon Hae-hyo, Song Seon-mi, Ahn Jae-hong. Screenplay: Hong Sang-soo. Cinematography: Kim Hyung-ku, Park Hong-yeol. Film editing: Hahm Sung-won.

On the Beach at Night Alone is narratively simple: An actress recovering from an affair with her married director that caused a scandal goes to visit a friend in Hamburg, Germany, and then returns to the city of Gangneung in Korea, where she visits more friends and, over many cups of soju, reflects on her life and affairs. But though the film is mostly talk about love and sex and other matters of relationship, it's larded with puzzles and arresting details, including two (or possibly three) endings. The first section of the film concludes on a beach in Hamburg, where the camera pans away from the actress, Young-hee (played by Kim Min-hee), standing alone, and looks at her friends walking away. Then the camera pans back but Young-hee is gone, and when the camera pans farther, we see Young-hee being carried off, slung over the shoulder of a man. We don't know who the man is, but she and her friend had earlier been accosted by a man wanting to know the time of day; when they don't reply, he walks off in disgust. And later, walking through the park, they spot the man again and run away. Is Young-hee's apparent abductor the same man? We get no answer, and the screen turns black before the second part, in Korea, begins with Young-hee sitting in a movie theater, lingering for a while after the lights come up and the theater empties. After meeting with some friends, she moves into a hotel that overlooks the sea. On the balcony outside, a man seems to be washing the windows of her room, but he has no soap or water or sponge or squeegee, and keeps "washing" the same spots over and over. Neither she nor her friends seem to notice this man, who also appears later, again simply standing unnoticed on the balcony. Later, when her friends leave, she goes out to the beach where she lies down and falls asleep. She is wakened by a man who turns out to be a member of a film crew working with the director with whom she had the affair. Eventually, she meets the director again and they have a conversation at the dinner table, where he gives her a book that seems to have a special significance for them. But there's a cut and we see Young-hee again lying on the beach, where she is again awakened by a man who, as in the previous awakening scene, tells her it's dangerous. This time, she tells the man that she was just dreaming, walks off alone, and the film ends. How to assimilate these eccentric, enigmatic moments into the film as a whole, with its extended dialogues about relationships? Because of its talk about sex and love, On the Beach at Night Alone has been likened to Éric Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales" films and to Richard Linklater's Jesse and Céline trilogy. But it reminds me more of the skewed reality of Michelangelo Antonioni's films, such as L'Avventura (1960), which never answers the questions about Anna's disappearance, or Blow-Up (1966), which never solves the central murder, if there was indeed one. Is the mysterious man who carries off Young-hee or the one who lingers on her balcony just a projection of her frustrations? Or are we misguided in even asking such questions?