There are thousands of films about love’s beginning, and a great many about love’s end. But far fewer deal with a relationship’s late-middle: the spreading, sluggish delta of coupledom when decades of familiarity, if they have not bred contempt, at least threaten irritation. “Winter’s Night,” Jang Woo-jin’s playfully melancholic third feature, after the acclaimed “A Fresh Start” and “Autumn, Autumn,” occupies this less trafficked territory with idiosyncratic grace and a surprising, gentle surrealism that lets us explore the possibility that actually those beginning-middle-and-end phases might exist simultaneously in the place where they’ve always been, and the people we once were might be wandering around there like stranded tourists.
A cleverly wrong-footing opening introduces us to Eun-ju, a wonderfully mercurial turn by Seo Young-hwa (from Hong Sang-soo’s “On the Beach at Night Alone”), and her husband Heung-ju, played by Yang Heung-ju, here reuniting with director Jang after “Autumn,...
A cleverly wrong-footing opening introduces us to Eun-ju, a wonderfully mercurial turn by Seo Young-hwa (from Hong Sang-soo’s “On the Beach at Night Alone”), and her husband Heung-ju, played by Yang Heung-ju, here reuniting with director Jang after “Autumn,...
- 12/15/2018
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
A halo of unnatural, blue, and red neon-light envelops the snowy landscape around the Buddhist temple of Cheongpyeongsa. Wide awake in the dead of night–silent guests of a bed and breakfast a short walk away–is a Seoul couple in their fifties: Eun-ju (Seo Young-hwa) and Heung-ju (Yang Heung-ju). It’s a trip down memory lane; some thirty years prior, the wintry landscape was home to their first impromptu rendezvous, but the flirting that presumably peppered the first date is very much a relic from a bygone era–more than a couple enjoying a holiday together, the pair look busy mourning a protracted, funereal goodbye. A talk-filled chamber drama marooned between moments of inexpressible loneliness and scenes of whimsical beauty, Jang Woo-Jin’s Winter’s Night is a delicate and charming portrait of a middle-aged couple at a sentimental standstill–a midwinter’s night dream unfurling through labyrinthine late-night strolls and chance encounters.
- 12/12/2018
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
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