Hong Sang-soo Brings Another Double Feature to New York Film Festival with In Our Day and In Water

When you attend the New York Film Festival for a few years, or even watch the lineup come together from afar, you come to expect certain filmmakers to turn up again and again. It’s rarer, though, to find a director who will routinely have pairs of new films screening at the same NYFF. But writer-director Hong Sang-soo only grows more productive as his career marches on; he used to write and direct a movie every couple of years. Lately, he writes, directs, produces, shoots, edits and composes the score for a couple of movies every year. This year’s NYFF double feature, running shorter than plenty of single features, featured Hong’s new films In Water and In Our Day.

In Our Day is the more familiar of the two, featuring an ambivalent actress, reconnecting friends, a scene-stealing cat and the pursuit of satisfaction. (All of these elements also appear in previous NYFF entry The Woman Who Ran.) The new film thematically yokes together two dialogue-based stories, with ex-actress Sangwon (Kim Minhee, also from Woman among many others) staying with her friend Jung-soo (Song Sunmi) to figure out her next move, while middle-aged writer Hong Uiji (Ki Joo-bong) fields questions from a pair of inquisitive young people (Park Miso and Ha Seong-guk) as his sobriety hangs in the balance. (This may be the least melodramatic succumbing-to-the-drink movie ever made.)

Hong’s camera remains fixed for five or 10 minutes at a time, capturing small talk, as well as cattiness in both senses of the word – the two friends discuss other people and also Jung-soo’s “gluttonous” cat, named Us. Throughout all the chatter, some naturalistically repetitive and some more philosophical, is a sense of characters searching, whether that’s communicated through acting advice, relationships to vices (“How can it be bad for you? It’s just food”) or musings on the shortness of life.

In Water takes a more experimental approach to that search, though in a characteristically understated way: For this story of youngish first-time director Seoung-Mo (Shin Seokho), dragging actress Nam-Hee (Kim Seung-yun) and cinematographer Sang-guk (Ha Seong-guk again) to a seaside town to make the passion project he hasn’t quite figured out (or written) yet, Hong shoots most of his images out of focus. It’s not all the same blur; the technique ranges from slightly soft on some interiors to genuinely blurry on many exteriors and especially wider shots, as if the gusts of wind are getting a little bit of sea-schmutz in the viewers’ eyes as they attempt to take in the scenery.

It could be a simple-enough metaphor for Seoung-Mo’s unformed artistic vision – or the blurriness of the relationships between the three filmmakers, which aren’t ever made explicit but give off the distinct impression that the director may soon become a third wheel. Watched together with its companion in the Hong Class of ’23, In Water also feels like an elaboration (albeit a brief, 61-minute one) on something Hong, the writer, says during In Our Day: “Maintaining a clear vision might be the hardest thing in the world.”

Hong makes it look easy; across different visual conceits, his movies have become instinctively recognizable. Yet In Water does sometimes come across as a self-portrait, as if Hong is using Seoung-Mo’s youthful decision to pull back the curtain on his own process. Without 30 films under his belt, we’re left to feel the acute and discomfiting sensation that the younger, fictional filmmaker is flailing – to share the doubts bubbling up from his tiny crew. American viewers might be reminded of various mumblecore indies from the 2000s, where aspiring artists fumble through not-quite-relationships sabotaged by their own inarticulate insecurity; Seoung-Mo and Sang-guk develop a kind of a nerdy guy/cool guy dynamic that plenty of low-budget indies have reinterpreted from mainstream high-school narratives.

In Water has more of a sad-sack quality than the semi-spirited chattiness of In Our Day, yet its images of young people wandering around in search of inspiration, artistic or otherwise, also have a shivery, ghostly edge that makes the melancholy feel earned. Though Hong now produces same-year double features almost as a matter of course, these two enhance each other, suggesting that the spaces in between major decisions contain their own revelations.

Director: Hong Sang-soo
Writer: Hong Sang-soo
Starring: Kim Minhee, Song Sunmi, Park Miso, Ha Seong-guk (In Our Day); Shin Seokho, Kim Seung-yun, Ha Seong-guk (In Water)
Release Date: October 1, 2023 (New York Film Festival)

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including Polygon, Inside Hook, Vulture, and SportsAlcohol.com, where he also has a podcast. Following @rockmarooned on Twitter is a great way to find out about what he’s watching or listening to, and which terrifying flavor of Mountain Dew he has most recently consumed.