Hong Sang-soo’s NIGHT & DAY opens for a one week run at Chicago’s FACETS tomorrow, 12/4!

“Hong Sang-soo has never more disarmingly realized his bleak, sardonic view of male desire than in Night and Day”
-Reverse Shot

“Very Korean in its emotional content, while also preserving a quizzical distance that is quite French, [Night and Day] is one of his lightest and most easily digestible metaphysical meals to date”
-Variety

“Emphasis on dialogue, combined with an unapologetically stationary camera, gives Hong’s work a casual, ‘artless’ façade that belies his carefully plotted, novelistic structure — of which Night and Day may be the most ambitious to date”
-Village Voice

“Few films more knowingly illustrate the lust and confusion of the male mind”
-Slant Magazine

“The film’s deceptively placid surface — punctuated by mesmeric pans and zooms—implies that each moment is suspect and part of the self-involved [protagonist's] larger creative process, which the director lays bare with piercing, X-Acto knife precision”
-TimeOut Ny

“When I finish a film, I feel like I have overcome a certain hurdle. It’s really good for me as a human being, and I hope that for some people, my films will do the same thing.”
-Hong Sang-Soo

Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo has established himself as the poet of male narcissism, desire, and neurosis and for more than a decade, he has been quietly but consistently turning out a series of films that are somehow both self-effacing and bold, behavioral and formally experimental, including masterpieces such as Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Turning Gate and Tale of Cinema. His most recent film, Night and Day finds him experimenting with a change of scene – set in Paris rather than Korea, thereby adding an element of cultural confusion to his usual thematic arsenal. After getting busted for smoking pot with some students, 40-year-old artist Seong-nam impulsively flees to Paris, leaving his wife behind, and finds himself living in a kind of limbo. Staying in a run-down hotel inhabited mostly by fellow Korean ex-pats, Seong-nam wanders aimlessly around the city, becoming ensnared by temptation in the form of both an ex-girlfriend, and a couple of young art students. Leisurely, episodic, sharp, and deeply funny, Night and Day finds Hong Sang-soo working at the height of his powers.

Directed by Hong Sang-soo, Korea, 2008, 35mm, 144 mins. In Korean and French with English subtitles.

Fri., Dec. 4 at 6:30 & 9:15 pm
Sat.-Sun., Dec. 5-6 at 2, 4:15, 6:30 & 9:15 pm
Mon.-Thurs., Dec. 7-10 at 6:30 & 9:15 pm