Whenever a film comes along with a filmmaker as its protagonist, it's usually a safe bet to say we're stepping into pretty personal territory for the artist behind the camera. However, when that filmmaker is South Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo, any assumptions made are done so at one's own peril. Hong is extraordinarily adept at manipulating our perception; in his universe, things are often not as they seem. In what's perhaps Hong's finest film, 2000's “Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,” the director told essentially the same story from varying POVs, deftly articulating each through one single relationship. "What is truth?" he rhetorically asked, refusing to give an answer. It's that sly sense of subversion that Hong brings out in each of his films, and that is especially true of his latest, “The Day He Arrives.”

This time, rather than taking on the concepts of truth and fiction, Hong tackles our perception of time, and yet “The Day He Arrives” feels, aesthetically and thematically, like an extension of Hong's 'Virgin.' It's not just that both films are shot in black and white, or that they both feature filmmakers as leads, it's the way in which Hong constantly challenges the audience to examine what they're watching. “The Day He Arrives” takes place over the course of one single day (maybe), in which a filmmaker, Seongjun (Yu Junsang), travels to Seoul to meet up with an old friend. When that friend doesn't show up to meet him on time, Seongjun begins to wander the streets, where he has a series of random encounters.

Among the people Seonjun encounters, there's a plucky young actress who seems desperate to work with him, and a group of young film students with whom he shares a drink. By the time Seongjun meets his friend, Youngho (Kim Sangjoong), it might be the same day, or it may be the next. In any case, the two soon join up with a film teacher, Boram (Song Sunmi), and share drinks at a bar where the proprietor seems to be perpetually absent. Seongjun plays the piano and asks the bar proprietor out for a drink…and as these seemingly mundane events take place, time seems to dissolve away and events begin to repeat themselves and blend together. Whether it's a day or the impression of a day no longer matters, and Seongjun begins to take stock of a life that isn't going quite the way he planned it would.

Having not made a film in several years, Seongjun's at a crossroads, and the day he arrives in Seoul becomes a catalyst for considerations—of coincidence and fate, and of stagnancy and motion. Hong skillfully weaves these themes in a surprisingly light and humorous manner, punctuated by an inescapable feeling of melancholy and loss. Seongjun's piano interludes—in which he hammers out Chopin's "Nocturne in C-sharp Minor," out-of-tune—become a kind of stirring glimpse into his mind and his sense of ennui. It's around this point that time becomes all but incalculable: Has Seongjun been in Seoul for one day, or several? With his life lacking direction, he's caught in a never-ending cycle.

It's part of Hong's genius that “The Day He Arrives” doesn't really reveal itself in the moment; the cyclical events play-out day-to-day trivialities, small talk and fleeting encounters, but when the sum is totaled it becomes something far greater than its parts. Hong lulls us into a kind of complacency akin to his character's own before revealing the film's treasures in a revelation that its protagonist may or may not ever have. He handles a surprising amount of thematic richness in this bare bones structure, and he conveys it with both elegance and grace. On the surface, "The Day He Arrives" may seem a trifle, a throwaway exercise leading to nowhere particular. But in true Hong fashion, simplicity is the ultimate deception, and for those willing to take the challenge, exploring the riches here yields great rewards.

Review by:
Matthew Lucas