On the Beach at Night Alone.
— MOVIES WORTH WATCHING —
A film that lingers long after the credits roll …
On The Beach At Night Alone
A must-see film !
Best Actress, Berlinale: Kim Min-hee
Screened at the Hong Kong Filmart: 14 MAR 2017
“Are you still searching for love?
Where’s love? It’s not even visible? You need to see it in order to search for it.
You know how charming you are?”
As Alfred Hitchcock has said time and time before, film is about the story, the story, and the story.
This would seem to be a classic tale: a story of forbidden love and a lost soul, quietly unraveling in plain sight. No heartbreak compares to a love that suffers under the gaze of a society that labels it ‘wrong’ and refuses to look away. Glimpses of a Woody Allen-esque style and flavour appear throughout the film, in its conversational rhythms and ironic asides. However, it is the remnants of auteur director Eric Rohmer that I see from the very first scenes of this masterpiece — the moral restlessness, the delicate moral debates, the intimacy of small moments.
I call it a masterpiece because it takes a fearless director to pursue a story to its highest truth without flinching. This feels like ‘real life’: imposition and intimacy combined, with scenes that visually read like live theatre. There is genuine guts in the staging, and the ensemble — even the smallest characters — work in careful concert. I felt transported into the middle of their lives; it was disorienting and profoundly uncomfortable. This film does not feel like an act, but a lived interior.
The bold performance of lead actress Kim Min-hee, which won her Best Actress at Berlinale, is richly deserved.
Her pain, suffering, and longing for an impossible love are laid bare with rare bravery. These subtle nuances are splendidly captured in the stillness of the camera, where the director patiently lets his leading lady inhabit every frame. The minimalist set is kept spare and clean, filtering an essential rawness that at times looks and feels almost documentary in its honesty.
While this work may possibly feel too close to home — as such it happens to mirror their true life situation — the director lays bare his perspective with candid honesty, and his heartfelt lines ring true when spoken, making the emotion land with real force.
Hong Sang‑soo’s script is strewn with pain and quiet heartache, and he never shies away from exposing those wounds. Like a modern echo of Romeo and Juliet, the characters yearn to love one another despite being in the wrong place, the wrong time, or with the wrong person. By the end, the film leaves you with an urgent, bittersweet impulse to love without fear.
This film is something all filmmakers have to see. Director Hong Sang-soo and his muse Kim Min-hee are the team to Watch!
Kim Min-hee in 'On the Beach at Night Alone'
We live in a wildly strange world where it is a rare and genuine stroke of luck to find and meet someone to love in a lifetime; this is precisely the poignant message the director conveys through the film.
“I’m the kind of person who needs to live alone.”
Film:
On The Beach at Night Alone
Screenwriter/Director:
Hong Sang-soo
Stars:
Kim Min-hee
Seo Young-hwa
Jung Jae-yeong
Distributor:
Finecut, Korea