Hahaha

As Hahaha was the first Sang-soo Hong movie I saw, I found it unusual, and certainly different from the Korean movies and directors I am already acquainted with.

Far from the raw beauty of Hwal and the dark mysteries of Janghwa, Hongryeon, Hahaha's main virtue seems to be the equilibrium found in the different sides of the same story, almost like a documentary made of fiction.

In this sense, Hahaha is not a deep film in itself, even though it is quite intellectual in its approach and structure. The final result is a lighthearted, refreshing and very entertaining movie, with a nice camera work and interesting settings.

The narrative is a bit tricky now and then, and probably it is a good idea to see this film at least twice to untie some secondary knots, even though the story gets clear enough from the first viewing.

All in all, a nice movie that certainly deserves to be watched.

I keep watching Hong Sang-soo movies in the hope that I'll find one I like, but I keep being disappointed. HAHAHA is no exception to that rule. It's an interminable work about drinking and socialising, just like the rest of the movies I've seen by him, and the characters are completely dull and alienate the viewer from the outset.

I love Korean cinema and think they're at the top of their game in various genres: from electrifying action thrillers to the art-house dramas of Kim Ki-duk, I'm a real fan. But Hong Sang-soo seems to keep making the same movie over and over again; he clearly has little to say as a writer and instead prefers to return to familiar themes that are so obviously his comfort zone.

I found zero distinguishing characters in HAHAHA, just a lot of light humour which wasn't funny, plus the soppy romance stuff that I avoid like the plague wherever I see it. Yeah, I'm still not a fan.

Have no idea why they chose to screen this at the recent Melbourne International Film Festival. I would have walked out after fifteen minutes but was trapped in the middle rows and had friends with me.

Knew I was in trouble from the opening scenes. Lousy photography with heavyhanded zoomed close ups throughout. Poorly lit and the most annoying thing of all, the story/script. Nothing at stake here, no conflict, annoying characters (both the male and female leads) no structure.

Have no idea why anyone would fund such a poorly written screenplay.

There is little humour in this film and it is filled with clunky dialogue as the lead actors fumble through a series of dates and relationship issues.

Love Korean cinema but this was surely one of the weakest ones I have ever had to sit through.

I am a hopeless Woody Allen fan. This movie is a must-see for them. Simple story in anyone's life but convoluted confused mind shows funny but somber.

The actors are not funny but they end up making mistakes being trapped by own stupidity. Anybody's story but well developed in sophistication.

This drama comedy shows the high level of story telling and character development.

The actors/actress are not familiar faces in other Korean movies but they are better than most Asian actors.

Highly recommended.

Rashômon was about the multiple framings of the story.

Chungking Express is about how two different stories, or glimpses of stories can share the same emotional and physical space.

Both were incredibly important films that changed cinema and, necessarily, how we dream and follow a story.

This film is somewhere in between those two, and it extends its hybrid condition as a story framer to the territory of Woody Allen's dialogs. Allen, himself a master of narrative frames, has his how different set of quirks and obsessions, superficially expressed in his incredible dialogs. That is borrowed by this screenwriter, also the director.

The outer frame is us watching a number of photographs documenting two friends meeting in a mountain, something we never actually see, and so emphasizes the artificial nature of the device: we're seeing someone telling the story of 2 people meeting. In that meeting, those two take turns to tell the other bits of stories that happened to them in previous months. So, we are watching the meeting of 2 friends, who remember several events. 3 frames. Within each story that we are told there are some other minor frames. One character is a filmmaker, the other one a poet. In one of the episodes, there is a performance framed, and for a few moments we are not allowed to see it's a performance. This is a very tight structure, very competent writing. But the real fun of this is the interior of this framed world.

All the episodes take place in the same small village. Places are very important. So there are places we get to see repeated over and over again, with different bits of story taking place: the restaurant attended by the 3 men and 2 of the women. The hotel, where every assumed sex happens. The new unfurnished apartment. The coffee with a view over the harbor, and the harbor itself. Everyone of these spaces receives a part of the story, different moments, different characters, different pieces of the puzzle. There is a sense of interlaced lives, which we see by glimpses, by small bits, told from 2 points of view, of 2 people who are protagonists of their own stories. We understand that they pass at each other, those stories are one and the same but in the end they hardly touch each other.

Food is an important element. Food is central to every cultural idiosyncrasy in the world, Korea is not the exception and it is really sensitive how korean specificities in the relation with food are brought to the center of this mosaic. Count the scenes that develop around meals.

The last important element is the orange hat, given by the film director to his mother, who than gives it to another male character whom she's fond of, and who has a relationship with one of the women who later ends up involved with the film director. That woman ultimately understands the indirect relation between the two men while the director tries to take her to his mom's restaurant, where she had already been with the other man. That's this kind of circular relations, crossed lives that we encounter throughout this film. The hat has the same importance here as the teddy bear had in Chungking Express.

What put me out of this film was oddly something that usually never fails in korean movies: the pure qualities of the images and various aspects of the mise-en-scène. This has the cheap look of a video low-budget production, there are several aspects of light and shape that would certainly have benefited the sensitive relation the writer establishes with the spaces. Chris Doyle understands this, we don't have that here. And the framing of every scene does not remotely match the clever multiple framings in the story. That's really bad, this film might have a power that we only sense, as it is.

My opinion: 4/5

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