Despite his consummate art of repetition, Hong Sang-soo never strolls around Seoul in the same way; neither are his characters shaken by their intermittent romances at the same rhythm. After the cold spring of Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, this autumnal variation on love renews Hong Sang-soo’scombinatorial inventiveness. The day film-school graduate Sunhi comes to ask her former teacher and lover for a letter of recommendation that will help her study in the United States, she meets two other men that she had loved. Beer/soju/chicken; cafe/restaurant: distinct yet similar places and situations overlap and recompose into sometimes uneasy, sometimes hilarious confrontations punctuated by acute use of the zoom and old tunes. In this film, which was shot in six days, excessive forthrightness does not preclude dissimulation – as is perhaps the case of all dialogues between lovers; a lie can be explained away as a “joke” by the person telling it, and an “honest” recommendation letter can devastate the person requesting it as a formality. On the heights of Changgyeonggung Palace, the trio of men that lends the title its possessive is given a “fine lesson” in letting go.
C. G.
