Hong Sang-soo's river cinema: always the same and always different

After about thirty films, we have learned that each new release of Hong Sang-soo It will be, nothing less, a new release from Hong Sang-soo. It will be no more, because his works are all part of one continuum, of a whole in which new titles can be confused or interchangeable with previous films. Now, it will not be any less, because the Korean filmmaker always achieves a minimum of interest and acuity in his transparent and repetitive observation of human behavior (perhaps we are like that: repetitive). And although it is as a case study for lovers of exercises in theme and variations (and this is where admirers of Bach, Cézanne, Ramones and, now in cinema, Ozu and Rohmer come in), his films always contribute.

So, although it hurts to say whether one Sang-soo film is better or worse than another, we come to Near the torrent activating another of the positive aspects that his films always have: it is we, as spectators, who must extract the message, often hidden between the lines, in a seemingly trivial gesture, in the inconsequential dialogues of a dinner well soaked with alcohol. On this occasion, Sang-soo speaks of the realization that many events in this life happen because they happen, that they are inevitable and cannot be foreseen nor are they what we would like. But, as is the case with the protagonist of Near the torrentThe best thing to do is, as the title suggests, to accept that everything—including us—is part of a flow. Sang-soo's films are too.