Published on November 6, 2024 at 10:54. / Modified on November 6, 2024 at 1:00 p.m.
“On the rocky island of Jeju, a young actor is making a film. When he lacks inspiration, he sees a silhouette at the foot of a cliff. Thanks to this meeting and a love song written years earlier, he finally has a story to tell.” This official summary says almost everything, about the film and the unique art of Korean Hong Sang-soo. For the thirty years that he has been active with his ever more minimalist cinema, the man has his unconditional fans, even if his films, currently produced at the rate of two per year, are rarely seen except at festivals. But is it possible to expand this base? After the 500 entries recorded for Introduction in 2022, a reckless distributor would still like to believe it.
It’s difficult for us to imagine the reaction of a neophyte spectator to this 29th feature film (barely, with a duration of 61 minutes). But after all, you can fall in love with a writer, a painter or a composer in front of one of his late works. The difficulty with Hong Sang-soo is that very few people still know that cinema is also an art and that In Water deliberately contravenes all the commonly accepted rules of a “good film”.
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