Night and Day

I don't know what to make of Night and Day, 2008 film from South Korea by Hong Sang-Soo. The entry on IMDB says it's about the mixed emotions involved in traveling, but I didn't get that. Some of it is about being lost in a foreign culture, sort of like Lost in Translation, but it's really something of a shaggy dog story, meandering for two and a half hours until it stops.

Kim Yeong-ho plays a man who leaves Seoul, fearing arrest for marijuana use. He goes to Paris, because he fancies himself a painter. He falls in with the Korean community there. He meets an old girlfriend, and then gets involved with two women, roommates and students at Beaux-Arts. He falls in love with the more immature of the two (she is played by Park Eun-hye, and I would have, too), even though he is married.

The film never really reaches a crescendo, much like the musical theme, which is Beethoven's Seventh, which slowly builds, but Hong never allows us to hear the climax. Kim is something of a shaggy dog himself, a strong man physically but very weak emotionally. At times he is all id, practically draping himself over Park, even though he is much older. He meets a man from North Korea and insults him, and later apologizes, saying he did so because he was weak.

Much of the film seems like a celebration of the banal. A bird falls from a nest at Kim's feet, he gets a bug in his eye, he visits the Musee D'Orsay and (as seen in the poster here) stares at Courbet's The Origin of the World. All the while, I'm wondering why I'm watching this, because I'm missing the bigger point that I imagine Hong is making. If there is one.

I didn't hate this film, but I can't recommend it, either.