Taking literally the tease that his work is a series of little differentiated variations of the same film, with Right Now, Wrong Then, Hong Sang-Soo proposes two films in one, which echo one another in a closeness that is more direct than usual. Trusting but immediately intrigued, the spectator discovers a first seemingly erroneous title, Right Then, Wrong Now, leading into a story with perfectly familiar figures: a roaming filmmaker meets an admiring young woman, in this case a painter. The comfort we feel on finding the habitual narrative patterns ideally prepares the ground for the delicious surprise of a second half, which bears the film’s original title and goes about correcting the previously related events. Set in the same spaces, in the same order with the same characters, this variation of the story explores other possibilities, and the romantic encounter on which is it built takes another subtle but profoundly different turn. Tiny differences, with a comical slant that delight the inevitably complicit spectator. Herein lies all the art of the brilliant Korean storyteller.
A.G.
