Characters and Their Shifting Living Quarters Are Realized and Reset in Walk Up

The social influences of one’s surroundings—namely the various dwellings we inhabit—act as a clever framing mechanism in South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s Walk Up. Specifically, the film visits each floor-spanning apartment of one particular building, characters neatly shuffling between each residence as they navigate personal employment woes and fluctuating relationship tensions. As Hong makes his way through the building from the ground up, the interpersonal connections between characters shift—romances blossom and fizzle, familial ties strengthen and disintegrate, rental power dynamics sweeten before souring—until they ultimately reset, ready to unfold anew. 

Filmmaker Byung-soo (Kwon Hae-hyo) and his daughter Jeong-su (Park Mi-so) arrive at a building owned by Ms. Kim (Lee Hye-young), an old friend of the director. Ms. Kim gives the two a tour of the three story edifice, which houses her own work studio on the basement level, her own residence on the first floor, an intimate restaurant owned by a woman named Sunhee (Song Seon-mi) and an apartment rented by a reclusive artist on the top level. After briefly entering each unit (and probably violating a couple lease agreements in the process), the three retire to Ms. Kim’s apartment for an evening of copious wine drinking. Suddenly, Byung-soo gets a call and states that he must run off to a production-related meeting. He urges his daughter and Ms. Kim to stay and drink, promising that he’ll be back shortly. Hours pass without his return, and Jeong-su drunkenly presses Ms. Kim to hire her as an interior design apprentice. 

As the young woman departs to fetch more wine from a convenience store, the next segment begins with Byung-soo, Ms. Kim and Sunhee eating a meal at the latter’s restaurant, wherein we find the film’s thesis of art, financing and the general impossibility of the two—creativity and capital—coexisting. “For them, a film is purely a means of making money,” Byung-soo drunkenly laments when he reveals that the plug was pulled on his most recent film just weeks before it was set to enter production. “Money is the only standard to judge anything.” 

As the building’s landlord, Ms. Kim proves just how vital making money is to the artistic process. Earlier in the film, when Byung-soo tours the uppermost apartment in the building and expresses admiration for the rooftop terrace, Ms. Kim urges him to move in. “The person living here keeps missing his rent…he’s a painter, but he doesn’t really earn money.” In an act of (albeit opportunistic) kindness, she tells Byung-soo he can move in rent-free. In the film’s third segment, it’s revealed he took her up on the offer—but his lack of profit in the film industry has caused their relationship to strain significantly. After showing up at his door with a piece of mail she “opened by accident” thinking it was hers, she confronts him about this creative drought. “Are you not making movies these days?” She asks him in a condescending drawl. “Not right now. I need to rest. Maybe in two years?” He offers. 

As a struggling restaurant owner, Sunhee also eventually falls victim to Ms. Kim’s escalating financial demands. “I’ve got no customers, how can she raise the rent? She’s so unreasonable,” she tells Byung-soo over dinner. Though his own complaints over the unfair influence of money colored his first interaction with fan-turned-girlfriend Sunhee, he’s quick to change the subject. “Let’s talk after eating. Not good for digestion,” he responds. Just moments later, he bemoans a U.S. filmic institution for offering to fly him out for a retrospective series (no doubt Film at Lincoln Center, which hosted a Hong retrospective almost exactly a year ago) for only offering to pay his way and not his girlfriends. “They must be really poor,” she comments. Considering that the New York Film Festival has typically screened at least two Hong films each year in its Main Slate for the past several years, it was impossible not to burst out laughing while seeing this film at the very same institution. (There must be no hard feelings, as FLC was the first theater to screen this film stateside.) Clearly, Hong is working through some personal disappointments as it pertains to his own metric of “success” here. 

A prolific filmmaker, Hong’s other NYFF ‘22 selection, The Novelist’s Film, also features Kwon Hae-hyo and Lee Hye-young (the titular novelist filmmaker) in leading roles. Their performances and relationships are wonderfully recalibrated in this effort: Lee is no longer an underdog, now the most advantageous of all of the characters presented in the film; Kwon, who plays a filmmaker once again, is similarly lauded but no longer financially influential, an interesting tango that demonstrates the boon to acting in concurrent Hong projects. Yet while Walk Up presents a wonderful triptych (with an epilogue-esque addendum at the very end) that showcases a bit more narrative finesse, The Novelist Film’s single day-spanning principal storyline feels comparatively more riveting, perhaps because the pursuit of filmmaking is presented as an aspirational artform as opposed to a facet of a soulless cash-grabbing industry. I suppose there’s no inherent fault in being honest. 

My main gripe with Walk Up is that it doesn’t emphasize the mouth-watering array of Korean food that the characters feast upon, despite one of the main characters owning a restaurant. The presence of alcoholic beverages, particularly wine, is given a much more concerted focus. It’s no substitute for the messy yet delectable-looking tteokbokki from In Front of Your Face or the enormous portion of bibimbap from The Novelist’s Film. Ironically, the names of Sunhee’s “delicious” dishes are never stated outright, but Byung-soo’s end-of-film girlfriend gets a huge compliment about the supple sirloin she brings home from the market. There’s an air of narcissism among these characters that’s quite funny as the story unfolds; further revelations are best left unspoiled.

By the time Walk Up comes to a conclusion, all of the characters appear in front of the building. They are either on their way elsewhere, appearing for an overdue visit or returning to perform job duties inside. This set-up mirrors the very beginning of the film, and relationships that have been fortified or abandoned since have miraculously seemed to regress into their original dynamics. Has Hong simply gone full-circle, setting these individuals up to relive the previous events and perhaps make different choices? Or does the suffocation of our small quarters cause us to become callous and self-centered? Does leaving our most intimate spaces allow us to embrace possibilities that we’ve since considered closed-off or impossible? Without the looming pressures of rent, work-from-home set-ups and casual business meetings, Hong suggests that we might just finally be free. 

Director: Hong Sang-soo
Writer: Hong Sang-soo 
Stars: Kwon Hae-hyo, Lee Hye-young, Park Mi-so, Song Seon-mi
Release Date: March 24, 2022 (Cinema Guild) 

Natalia Keogan is Filmmaker Magazine’s web editor, and regularly contributes freelance film reviews here at Paste. Her writing has also appeared in Blood Knife Magazine, SlashFilm and Daily Grindhouse, among others. She lives in Queens with her large orange cat. Find her on Twitter @nataliakeogan