It typically appears as if probably the most devoted followers of the prolific South Korean director Hong Sangsoo regard him as incapable of creating an inessential work. As a result of his movies play with theme and variation, the logic goes, they’re greatest considered in tandem, as installments in a regularly refined investigation of the clumsy, painful, droll ways in which folks, typically booze-slicked, work together. A present sequence of Hong’s options at Movie at Lincoln Middle presents a lot of the titles on double payments.
But when Hong is constant in his materials and his model, right down to his signature zooms, his options are uneven in high quality. For each “Lodge by the River” (2019), he makes a quickie that appears to have leaped straight from inspiration to display screen. With its restricted settings and characters, noodled synthesizer rating (composed by Hong himself) and lengthy takes that court docket cringe comedy but in addition appear like they had been merely sensible, “In Entrance of Your Face,” one in all two Hong films from final 12 months’s New York Movie Pageant, falls into the minor camp.
Sangok (Lee Hyeyoung) is a former actress visiting South Korea from her dwelling in the USA. Her sister, Jeongok (Cho Yunhee), remarks that there’s lots they don’t find out about one another anymore. Sangok has a gathering with Jaewon (Kwon Haehyo), a Hong-like filmmaker — she compares his films to quick tales — who needs to solid her.
A stain on an outfit from an impulsive meal, a modified assembly spot and the absence of meals on the new location pose obstacles earlier than Sangok confides in Jaewon, in a revelation that accommodates the movie’s level. The key is poised someplace between triteness and disarming simplicity.
In Entrance of Your Face
Not rated. In Korean, with subtitles. Operating time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters.