Woman is the Future of Man

OFFScreen Presents
Woman is the Future of Man
Dir. Hong Sang-soo - South Korea/France, 2004 - 88 mins.
Sunday, February 18th - 7 & 9:30 PM
Newcomb Hall Theatre
Tickets $3

A sense of loss permeates this wonderfully titled South Korean film, where memory, desire and raw self-interest clash against one another with startling poignancy. A story about two men and the woman they separately possessed and then each abandoned, the film was directed by Hong Sang-soo, one of the most exciting and authentically individual filmmakers working today. Wreathed in a profound melancholy, Mr. Hong's films lyrically explore the limits of subjectivity, its pathos and its dangers.

Woman is the Future of Man was nominated for the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival when it was first released in 2004.

MANOHLA DARGIS wrote in the New York Times of the film after it screened at the 2004 New York Film Festival:

Mr. Hong has a quiet, delicate touch and what happens between Sunhwa and the men happens quietly, delicately and with enormous feeling. There are no dramatic flourishes or lofty speeches; like quite a few of Mr. Hong's film characters, the friends drink too much and flail into the night with poignant ineloquence. There is some clumsy sex (another of this filmmaker's signatures), but a melancholic lack of connection. At one point, Hunjoon shows Sunhwa photographs that he took of their old apartment. She asks why, and he says: "Because that's the place where I treated you so badly. I wanted to go back, confront the past." She doesn't really say anything in return. Unlike the men, she doesn't cling to the past, not only because it's painful, but also because she is fully in the present.

To read Dargis's full review click here.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day!