Cannes. "Like You Know It All"

By David Hudson on 05/17/2009

[Updated through 5/20]

"Hong Sang-soo's new film is not what I expected at all," writes Daniel Kasman in The Auteurs' Notebook. "His last three ('Tale of Cinema,' 'Woman on the Beach' and 'Night and Day') all seemed subtle but substantial evolutions of a filmmaker unjustly accused of making the same movie again and again. Each had a discreet look, setting, and cast, but Hong's new film, 'Like You Know It All,' is puzzling, a remarkably amorphous film that harkens back to the feel of Hong's first two movies while continuing to blend his structuralist rhymes and repetitions of the story deeper, more mysteriously and tenuously into the texture of the movie."

"The soju keeps on flowing - and so does the talk - in 'Like You Know It All,' another playful exercise in liquor-lubricated truthtelling from Hong Sang-soo, and arguably his most broadly amusing work yet," writes Justin Chang in Variety. "After his overextended Parisian detour last year with 'Night and Day,' the South Korean auteur is back on familiar geographical and comedic terrain with this two-part tale of a film director drawn into various awkward social and romantic configurations.... As might be surmised from its impudent jab of a title, 'Like You Know It All' neither achieves nor aims for the melancholy perfection of Hong's exquisite 'Woman on the Beach' (2006); structurally, it feels like that film's slightly inebriated cousin - looser, less elegant, possessed of a more overtly farcical sensibility. But like 'Beach,' it shows the writer-helmer's ongoing interest in making movies about artists, his eagerness to strip away their delusions and pretensions by subjecting them to rigorous comic scrutiny, primarily through their alternately flirtatious and tetchy exchanges with the opposite sex."

"Hong seems to be mellowing," finds Lee Marshall in Screen, "moving away from the prickly impenetrability of early works like 'The Power of Kangwon Province' towards a gentler, more observational humour - though he has not abandoned his tendency to make films about filmmakers, or his fascination with two-part structure."

Screening in this year's Directors' Fortnight.

Update: Hong "continues his self-deprecating journey deep up his own ass, focusing upon an arty, commercially unsuccessful film director whose life and work matches Hong's in almost every detail," writes Mike D'Angelo at the AV Club. "I'm generally a fan, and enjoyed Hong's three previous films..., but diminishing returns are finally beginning to set in, I'm afraid."

Update, 5/18: "It's essentially a comedy, one that taps a vein not dissimilar to the Comedy of Un-comfortability that's so in fashion Stateside, while maintaining a consciousness about ego and the weakness of best intentions in the face of desire that grounds the humor in something hopelessly sad," writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog. "Before the film's evening premiere at the Palais Stephanie, the filmmaker took the stage and welcomed the crowd, in English, with a kind of apology: 'I know you have many other things in life to do. Thank you for your choice.' Even that slight statement feels ironic and self-reflexive, coming before the presentation of a film in which the filmmaker's alter ego falls asleep watching two films at a festival, and otherwise devotes much of his time at said festival to naps, drinks, and accidentally destroying old friendships. A colleague commented that 'Like You Know it All' is to Hong Sang-soo what 'Deconstructing Harry' was to Woody Allen, and he's not wrong... What's up for debate is whether anyone outside of Hong Sang-soo's devoted but tiny clutch of fans will find it rewarding."

Update, 5/20: "Film festivals and cinema workshops come across as hotbeds of drunken brawls, fulsome schmoozing and adulterous sex in 'Like You Know It All' - Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo's pertly observant and endearingly droll send-up of the film and intellectual scene." Maggie Lee in the Hollywood Reporter: "Like all his works, clever symmetries of character, plot and mise-en-scene abound but 'Like' more readily indulges the audience with easy comedy and features a central character (possibly fleshed out from some personal experience) that makes one care more than one normally would in a Hong Sang-soo film.... Zany scenes of women bursting into hysterical fits and men pummeling each other at the slightest provocation, simply adds to the bemused attitude to human foibles."

Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 2009.

[Photo: "Like You Know It All," Jeonwansa, 2009]

Tags: Cannes 2009, Hong Sang-soo, Korean Cinema, Like You Know It All