One man touches many lives in “Introduction”
Not rated. In Korean, with subtitles.
66 minutes. In theaters.
Jean-luc Godard famously said that every movie needed a beginning, a middle and an end, “but not necessarily in that order.” South Korean director
Hong Sangsoo, at least as prolific in recent years as Godard was in the late 1960s — and in his own sly way, at least as radical — puts this axiom into practice, and pushes even further.
“Introduction,” Hong’s slender 25th feature, is divided into three parts, each one concerning the same young man. These vignettes show him dealing with various other people, including (separately) his parents, his girlfriend and a movie star. Whether we are watching three parts of the same story, and whether they are arranged chronologically or according to some other principle, aren’t questions that are easily answered.
Science-fiction and fantasy franchises make narrative hay out of multiverses and competing time lines, but Hong is a realist, zooming in on the myriad ethical and emotional possibilities that dwell in ordinary experience. Things happen, but they could happen differently, though in the end that might not make much of a difference at all. His characters often seem caught in an endless loop of slight variation, repeating patterns of behavior that include eating, drinking, taking long walks and making small talk.
And so it is for Youngho (Shin Seokho), a student who is both impulsive and aimless. In the first part, he goes to visit his father (Kim Youngho), an acupuncturist whose anguished prayer occupies the film’s opening scene. While Youngho is in the waiting room, Dad is with a character identified in the credits as Old Actor
(Ki Joobong) who will reappear, in the drunken company of Youngho’s mother, in the final section. In the meantime, Youngho will follow his girlfriend, Juwon (Park
Miso), to Berlin, where she has come, accompanied by her mother, for an interview with an expatriate Korean artist (Kim Minhee).
Shot in black and white (with Hong serving, for the first time, as cinematographer) and clocking in at a little more than an hour, “Introduction” is both lucid and elusive. The title may refer to Youngho’s stage of life, at the beginning of adulthood, or to the fact that in each chapter, acquaintances are made or renewed. The movie may also be intended to serve curious viewers as a point of entry into Hong’s sprawling and addictive body of work.
But like his film from last year “The Woman Who Ran,” it strikes me as more of a deep cut for devotees. In the midst of everything else, some of us crave a glass of soju and a stroll on an icy beach where the forecast is for romantic disaffection and wary politeness punctuated by sudden squalls of feeling. It’s a taste worth acquiring.