Woman is the Future of Man

South Korean cinema is hot on the international film festival circuit these days, and last year this Hong Sang-Soo film got a rare though limited American release and wound up at #30 in the Indiewire critics poll, and now comes to DVD with an introduction by the relentless cinema enthusiast Martin Scorsese. I found it intriguing but no great shakes, somewhat reminiscent of the American indie “mumblecore” movement in exploring the sexual and romantic entanglements of half-formed young people in the decade after college. In this case it explores the ambiguous friendship between a filmmaker just returned from the U.S. and a novice art history professor, both of whom had been involved during college with a woman they decide to re-visit on the drunken spur of the moment. Scorsese speaks accurately of the film’s “unfolding” quality, as the characters and their relationships emerge by indirection and asides. The story is small-scale and presented mostly in stable mid-shot, with minimal cutting or camera movement -- which seems characteristic of Asian cinema aside from chopsocky -- but with careful patterning and depth of field. There’s a fair amount of sex but it seems sad and inconsequential, so it’s wry humor and painful unconscious self-revelation that carry the film. The unfamiliarity of South Korean settings gives it continuous interest, even when the characters lose our sympathy. (2004, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-63.)