If you’ve ever attended the New York Film Festival before, you know it wouldn’t be NYFF without Hong Sang-soo. The South Korean filmmaker churns out films at a clip that would make even Steven Soderbergh quake in his boots. Since 1996, he has released 35 features. Of those 35, upwards of 17 have graced the screens at NYFF, and at this point he is basically a shoo-in for the Main Slate if he’s got a film or two in the can. Coming in at a combined 156 minutes, Nowhere to Lay My Eyes and The Day She Returns are his latest efforts, never wavering from his signature minimalist filmmaking style. 

The Day She Returns stood out to me, not because I liked it more or thought it was better than his other film (they screened them back-to-back for press, so I got a full four or so hours of Sang-soo), but because it was so minimal. I left thinking, “What was the point of that?” Since then, I have been thinking about it more and more. 

The film follows Bae Jeongsu (Song Seon-mi), an actress who has just been in her first film after a long hiatus, as she is interviewed by three local journalists for its release. Aside from the final scene, this is the whole movie. One camera angle is pointed at Bae in a restaurant as she answers the same questions from each interviewer. There’s a brief cut outside where she regroups after each interview, but you could almost count the total number of cuts in the movie on two hands.

The set-up is familiar for Sang-soo, setting the camera in one spot and just letting the actors work for long stretches, but this film’s hyper-focus on one setting and repeated scenario is both perplexing and fascinating. Bae’s answers change with every interview, or at least how she frames the responses. It’s reminiscent of having a story to tell multiple people, and the story rounds into shape each time you tell it. You become more confident in telling each piece of the tale, emphasizing different details with different audiences depending on their reactions, until you find the perfect recipe that you can repeat moving forward. Bae’s interviews are like this, functionally saying the same things in each one but being more candid or reserved based on who she’s talking to. 

Sang-soo touches on performance, repetition, and perfection in The Day She Returns. After the interviews, Bae heads to an acting class and combines all three conversations she had into one script to perform with a scene partner. In the theater, it felt like I was watching an episode of The Rehearsal, only in reverse. You’d think she would have practiced the interviews during acting class to prepare for them ahead of time, not the other way around. It’s as if she’s trying to perfect the interview process, taking the best parts of all the interviews to build the best version of them to use in the future. 

In each conversation, Bae offers up moments of authenticity. They happen to be at a German restaurant that’s not quite open yet, and she brings up German beer in each interview, offering some to each interviewer when clearly she just wants to have one herself. “German beer is just different!” she says each time. In every interview, she chooses different parts of her life to reveal, but this one small piece of her desires slips out in all three. 

Sang-soo packs a lot into this exploration of an artist. Actresses like Bae constantly balance giving a good interview, bringing their true selves to the conversation, and also plugging the movie properly. How can she bring a fresh perspective to these interviews and not simply repeat herself? It’s a double-edged sword doing repetitive interviews to get better at them while also not giving the same one each time. There’s more complexity here than you might think at first glance. 

Hong Sang-soo films are a mainstay at NYFF, and it feels like I’m just finally catching on to what he’s up to. His minimalist style is easy to dismiss at first, but there are layers to each of his films if you give them more thought. The Day She Returns is no different. He uses Bae as a gateway to examine a specific kind of person’s experience and let the audience see them adapt in real time to different interviewers. It’s a captivating film and a great entry point into his style. 

Review Courtesy of Cameron K. Ritter

Feature image courtesy of NYFF