Kangwon-do ui him

This is a great film. If this is any indication, than Hong Sang-Soo really is "Asian cinema's best kept secret". It's very similar in style to Tsai Ming-Liang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, and covers a lot of the same ground as them thematically, but I think I actually enjoy this more as a whole than any single one of their films. The overt minimalism is slightly less pronounced here than in their work, although it still completely fits that style (the camera never moves even once), and somehow I found the film less self-consciously "slow" than Tsai Ming-Liang or Hou Hsiao-hsien, which I think is part of the reason I enjoyed it more. Plus, it doesn't keep it's subjects quite as detached as Hou does. I felt like the film was also somehow more "complete" and less open-ended (just barely) than some of their work, although that's not to say it had much of anything resembling a forward-moving plot. I would have a hard time believing that Sophia Coppola wasn't directly influenced by this film for "Lost in Translation" (scenes of a young woman wandering around by herself, and languishing in her hotel room wearing punk panties can't help but seem familiar).

Unfamiliar with the works of Hong Sang-soo, I started watching 'The Power of Kangwon Province'. In the early scenes of the film, you see a microphone appearing, used for recording sound. I paused the movie briefly and checked on Google, just to make sure that this was really a picture made by a critically acclaimed director. After Google gave me the confirmation, I finished the movie in one go, satisfied about my first encounter with director Hong.

'The Power of Kangwon Province' is a South Korean drama, first released in 1998 and is written and directed by Hong Sang-soo. This film was Hong's second and other praised movies by Hong are 'The Day a Pig fell into a Well' and 'Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors'. The movie stars Oh Yun-hong as student Ji-sook and Baek Jong-hak as college professor Sang-kwon. I also recognised Kim Yoo-suk as a policeman. Kim played one of the leading roles in 'The Isle'.

The Kangwon province, with mountains and forests, is located in the north eastern part of South Korea and the demilitarised zone splits up the area and continues into North Korea. This movie however is not about the Korean divide, but about relationships. 'The Power of Kangwon Province' tells actually two stories. The first part of the movie is about Ji-sook, who is on a trip to the Kangwon province with her two girlfriends, where she strikes up a fling with a policeman. The second part of the film involves the story of Sang-kwon, a husband and father, who visits the mountains of Kangwon for leisure together with a friend. Both men end up in the arms of a prostitute. During the movie, by coincidence both stories cross each other and at the end of the movie director Hong connects the two stories together.

The style of filming, editing and use of music is very minimalistic, but the end result is intriguing. Every camera shot is a steady shot that doesn't zoom in or out or moves sideways, followed by a hard cut to the next shot. Music only plays at the beginning and ending. By the way that Hong is filming, you really feel connected to the actors and therefore closer to Hong's dim view on relationships between man and a woman. You feel the pain and sorrow of Ji-sook when she returns from Kangwon by bus and cries and cries and cries. Even the sex scenes feel so sad and basically Hong managed to remove the sex out of the sex scenes.

It is unclear to me why Hong left in the scenes where the microphone is noticeable, as mentioned in the introduction. 'The Power of Kangwon Province' is however worth watching for its unusual minimalistic style and the underlying depressing note of the film. If you are in a positive mood, then I would recommend you to wait watching this movie, as it affects your mood significantly, but if you have the chance to see this picture, please do so. Overall rating: 6.9

I saw this director's "Woman On The Beach" and could not understand the good to great reviews. This film is much like that one, two people who are caught in a relationship with very little dynamic and even less interest to anyone else. Like his other films, you have to want to listen to vacuous dialog, wade through very little and become enchanted with underwritten, pretty uninteresting characters. If you feel you can like this film, don't let my review stop you. I do like minimalism in films, but I feel Tsai Ming-Liang's films are far superior. He has a fairly terrific actor in Lee Kang-Sheng in his films. There is nothing here. I wish IU liked it, but I don't. Oh, well.

This is a good movie for those who like art films, of which I am one. The plot is obscured behind some seemingly vacuous dialog for most of the movie, and there isn't really a traditional arc for either the plot or the characters - so you can call this contemplative. The director succeeds in encouraging the audience to recall its own emotional reactions rather than be forced to react along with its characters - you don't really get 'drawn in' to this movie, you're drawn along with it, like watching the scenery change as you float down river. It's successful and well done, but, for all its positives, low on entertainment value.

Additionally, this movie is not like Hou Hsiao Hsien or Tsai Ming Liang. This movie does have a more or less stationary camera, lack of score and generally non-glamorous locations and characters, but that does not qualify as similar to or reminiscent of those filmmakers, as other reviewers have suggested. If you want to compare this to another 'Asian New Wave' movie you've seen, this is more in keeping with an Ed Yang film, although lacking the grandeur and narrative complexity. So even that comparison is a stretch. To me, this looks and feels much more like an early Jarmusch movie, just with more sympathetic (if less interesting) characters. That comparison may give you a better sense of what you're sitting down to watch.

This movie sounded like it might be entertaining and interesting from its description. But to me it was a bit of a let down. Very slow and hard to follow and see what was happening. It was as if the filmmaker took individual pieces of film and threw them in the air and had them spliced together whichever way they landed (definitely not in sequential order). Also, nothing of any consequence was being filmed. I have viewed quite a few different Korean films and have noticed that a good portion are well made and require some thinking on the viewer's part, which is different from the typical Hollywood film. But this one befuddled me to no end. I viewed the film a second and third time and it still didn't do anything for me. I still don't really understand what the filmmaker was trying to convey. If it was to just show a typical mundane portion of a person's life, I guess he succeeded. But I was looking for more. Needless to say, I can't recommend this movie to anyone.