South Korean film director Hong Sang-soo is cinema’s reigning poet of strained politeness, awkward confrontation, and space-filling chatter. In film after film—there are two Hongs at this year’s New York Film Festival, which is about average for the prolific South Korean—characters meet in the street or on a beach, in restaurants or hotels, and talk about the weather or the food in front of them, in banal and repetitious dialogue.

Continue reading ‘Introduction’ Is Hong Sang-Soo Stripping Down His Artistry To its Simplest, Most Telling Gestures [NYFF Review] at The Playlist.